


Jarilo

by Kiko_Murda



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Beta Read, Cannibalism, Child Death, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, Gore, Happy Ending, Horror, Insanity, M/M, Mob Violence, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:15:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27579685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiko_Murda/pseuds/Kiko_Murda
Summary: Half the continent is in a froth over what’s happening in Temeria. No one Eskel’s talked to can give him the faintest idea ofwhat’shappening, only that something is and there’s no witcher to take care of it. The breath freezes in Eskel’s lungs and his heart wobbles.Geralt should be taking care of it.______________________Or: A love letter to Velen, from a horror literature nerd.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 66
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rough ride, friends. It ends well, but it takes a quite a detour through some real nasty territory. Please look at the tags and take care of yourselves.
> 
> This was initially intended for the Sordid Saovine event but I just could not bang this beast out fast enough. Whoops. Shout out to Eskelchopchop for the beta, but also shout at him because this whole thing is his damn fault.
> 
> Real quick: Eskel and Geralt are in a long-standing, open relationship and have been witcher married for sixty plus years. Just take my hand, I’ll explain later!

Geralt wakes up just in time to catch himself before he tips all the way out of the saddle. The road is empty in both directions and, as far as he can hear, there’s nothing larger than a squirrel under the dim canopy of ancient trees on either side for five hundred feet. No witnesses, at least. His exhaustion weighs heavy on him, despite his nap. It had been a tough hunt, long and complicated. And his reward at the end had been a long and complicated fight.

A beast had been terrorizing Crookback Bog and the Nilfgaardians lost one too many squads trying to deal with it themselves. These military types were never willing to negotiate for better pay, but the Nilfgaardians had never outright lowballed a witcher’s work, either. So Geralt had let their problem become his, a decision he would later regret.

Turned out that ‘the beast’ was a pair of chorts, a mating set. He’d done his best to trap and deal with them one at a time, but one of the little ones had got caught instead, and that had brought the whole mess down on him. When he’d dropped their heads at the feet of the quartermaster, he managed to renegotiate for half again his initial fee. It hadn’t been near enough, not close to what the job was worth, but fuck, his ribs hurt and he was tired of arguing.

He shakes away the memory and mental cobwebs. Ever patient Roach is still waiting for Geralt to get his head right and his seat back under him. “Who’s my good girl?” he murmurs, ruffling her mane as he struggles to gather his scattered wits. It takes longer than it ought, but he hasn’t slept at all in three days. Tough even on a witcher. That’s on top of an already lean year. It’s not even high summer yet, and he’s burned through all his winter weight. Eskel is going to have a fit if he sees him looking like a medic’s underfed musculature model again. With any luck, the money will improve soon and he can put a few pounds back around the waist before he manages to herniate something. He doesn’t want to imagine asking Yen to please put his organs back in their right spots. Eskel only yells. She'll be _sarcastic_ at him.

Poor Roach is looking worse for wear, too. A little rougher in the coat, and smaller around the middle; needing to rest a little more often. Geralt’s been making an effort to walk beside her more than ride. She always does her best for him and it seems cruel to do anything less for her.

He guides her into motion with his knees and makes an effort to stay awake this time. The soft sounds of running water and rustling leaves are the sort of noise he wishes he could bottle, for the nights when nightmares press too close. He finds his eyes slipping shut again, so keeps himself occupied by planning around his next contract: clearing out a series of tunnels and cellars over in the Mire. The notice makes it sound like nekkers, so he’ll want to make more ogroid oil. Though if the cave system encroaches on the buried elven ruins Velen is riddled with, there’s a fair chance of wraiths. A reliever’s decoction would be nice to have. Both, in addition to drawing from the Place of Power near Downwarren, should set him up nicely.

It’s not his usual habit to bother with the naturally occurring magic of the world, abundant though it is. Magic has never been his strong suit and adding sheer brute force to his complete lack of finesse tends to make more problems than it solves. But, if he's dealing with nekkers and wraiths and an unknown length of underground expanse, _yrden_ will outshine his bombs, no contest. Less chance of bringing the roof down on himself by accident, for instance.

Speaking of bringing things down on himself… He takes a deep breath to test his ribs. Yeah, still screaming bloody murder. He isn’t thrilled by the crunchy sound in his side, either. Looks like he’s going to have to wrap his ribs after all. What a waste of bandages. Fucking chorts.

He drags his attention from his aches and pains and focuses back on the road. It’s still a boring, muddy path clamped between rancid swamp water and overgrown cattails, interrupted by the occasional hulk of an abandoned human structure. He idly wonders why it’s impossible to draw more than one type of magic from any given Place. It’d be a lot more convenient, being able to buff any of his signs as needed. Yen would know. For obvious reasons, she has a much better understanding of what Places of Power actually are than he could ever hope (or want) to grasp. Hell, Eskel has more than once undertaken to explain the mechanics to him. It had all sounded needlessly complicated. As far as he can tell, a Place of Power is a spring where magic wells up instead of water. He’d told them both this when the subject had come up. The faces they’d made still warm him on the long, lonely nights of the Path.

When they arrive at the foot of the craggy hill, it’s not quite noon. He treats his girl to as nice a rub down as his aching body will allow and sets her to graze with a pat. He thinks about wrapping his ribs for a few moments, but he’s always hated the sensation and maybe, if he puts it off long enough, it’ll sort itself out. A man can dream.

With a brisk head shake, he starts his ascent, though he pauses midway to look around. Sure, Velen is a nightmarish shit hole, but it does have some nice views. The plush emerald of the swamp is startling, dotted here and there with the diamond glint of its waters. Without the noxious gasses burning his nose and the choking bark of the drowners that reside there, he can almost understand Johnny’s love of the place. Crookback Bog is beautiful, in the lethal way of weapons and wolves.

Lethal, even, as a wild mare. He spots her on the edge of Downwarren, to the south west. At this distance, it could be any one of the feral black horses in the region, but he knows it’s her. The Mother of the Ladies of the Wood. Quite a mouthful, a name like that. He knows her true name, though. Pretty sure he does, anyway. It was buried in the stacks in Oxenfurt, in a book of old gods that Dandelion had wanted for some project or another. Geralt’s been holding onto it, a hedged bet. He keeps it as a short cypher in his bestiary.

The locals call her Black Beauty, after Geralt himself had set her free with gifts of bone and feather and blood. He regrets it and he doesn’t. He can’t regret five breathing children, safe in Novigrad. He won’t. But he can see the mass grave of Downwarren from where he stands now and he can’t pretend it balances it out. There had been children in that village, too. He’d done the best he could with the choices he’d had. He’s lived long enough to accept that refusing to choose is a choice on its own. A costly one, at that.

They try to stay out of each other’s way nowadays, after that first, fraught meeting. Their current impasse is better for everyone, though he’d be a fool to think it’ll last. She frolics in the ruins she made for herself as he watches.

With a shiver that unsettles his tender ribs, he feels her attention shift to him. She’s still playing horsey games down in the valley, but the weight of her focus is hard to miss. He turns away and continues up.

His medallion’s buzzing along, vibrating faster the higher he climbs, reaching a fever pitch as he steps over the last ledge. The monolith hums somewhere below his range of hearing and its hollow eye flickers violet. He’s always wondered if the peasant belief in the magic of rocks with holes in them is rooted in Places of Power like this.

It takes some maneuvering, but he manages to get on his knees with minimal suffering. Settling on his heels before the stone, he reaches out in a way he’s never been able to describe, despite Dandelion’s persistent curiosity. He’s halfway finished drawing when the violet energy that’s been coiling so sweetly in his chest jerks into a vice grip. He starts to abort the draw...but then, he doesn’t. The power has relaxed again. Like it never misbehaved in the first place. Maybe it didn’t. Or he did it himself, by accident.The chorts _had_ rung his bell pretty hard. A decent enough concussion could disrupt any of his senses, why should magical ones be any different?

He finishes drawing, relishing the little electric burst that comes with it. It zings down his spine and lights up his sacrum. As a young man, it never failed to get him to half mast. As the most magically sensitive young man in Kaer Morhen, Eskel’d already have a hand down his pants. He laughs a little at the memory of Eskel bending him over the altar during the investiture of their medallions. _It tingles, Wolf. Don’t it feel good?_ Sure had.

He hauls himself to his feet and nearly goes ass over tea kettle down the slope. Sure, he’s hurt and hungry, but not _that_ hurt and hungry. He reassesses himself. Deep breath. His ribs ache like hell on fire, but his lungs fill readily enough. Not bleeding into his chest cavity, then. Maybe the decoction he’d slammed back before squaring off with the chorts had gone bad. It hadn’t tasted wrong, but then again, he’d never met a witcher potion that tasted right in the first place.

Or he’s tired. And he _is._ He’s fucking exhausted.

He shakes it off and starts picking his careful way downslope. That's it. All he needs is sleep. Not stolen minutes in the saddle or an hour or two of meditation. Real sleep. The kind of sleep with bedrolls and dreams. He’ll rest now, let himself recover a bit, and draw again later if he has to. That’s all.

* * *

Roach rears.

He spins, searching the treeline for whatever is frightening her. It takes a little too long to snap out of the sludgy trance he’s somehow fallen into, and he really needs that to stop happening. It’s going to get him killed. But the road is still, and the surrounding woods are filled with the usual birdsong. He wheels around a second time, just be sure his senses aren’t fooling him again. Still no suspicious shadows, or out of place growls. No unexpected movements of grass or smells of predator. The details are right. Everything is as it should be. There’s no danger. “What the hell?” he asks her, soft and strained.

Roach isn’t allowed to lose her mind. She’ll have to come up with something else because Geralt’s already got it covered. His diaphragm flexes, like it wants to release a hysterical laugh, but the motion sets his ribs screaming. Didn’t he wrap them up again? He meant to rewrap them. His mind starts slowing down again and he gets caught up watching the shine of the buckles in Roach’s tack. Fuck, why can’t he focus?

He’s been… off. Missing time. Sometimes, he realizes he’s been standing in one spot for hours on end, though he has no idea what’s kept him so transfixed. Other times, he— well, he wakes up without having been asleep. Usually in the empty husk of Downwarren, though he doesn’t know why or even remember how he got there.

There’s something wrong with him. Roach shifts and polished metal flares with reflected light. He can’t fucking think.

There’s something wrong. With him. He knows. It’s a fuzzy sort of knowledge that sinks below the surface of his thoughts. If it were… If it were important. It wouldn’t be so hard to. Focus. He has to focus. He has to

He darts out a hand, reaching with supernatural speed for a glint of polished steel.

Roach rears.

He spins—

* * *

He drifts in and surfaces. Not all the way, he can’t quite grasp the edges of the vessel (body, some far away part of him insists. This is his _body._ ) enough to force himself all the way in and everything else out. But he’s in far enough to know he’s eating. It’s metallic and warm and slimy. And it’s still trying to get away from him. Massive muscles heave beneath him and he dully hears something crunch in his side as a kick connects hard enough to force him back.

But not for long. He’s so hungry and here’s all this warm meat, laid out.

The far away part of him rails, and he can feel his handhold on the vessel slipping with the force of its rage and disgust. Maybe… he shouldn’t eat. If it’s so important. His grip slips again and he drifts further.

Not important. He’s so hungry. He presses his face back into the warm, struggling meat. But it’s hard to eat. The screams inside and outside his head _hurt_ , so with a jerk of his hand and a flex of his will, he ends the outside screams. That seems to quiet the inside screams too.

The last scrabbling fingertip comes free of the vessel, and he can finally eat in peace.

* * *

The grass is soft beneath him as his knee goes out and drops him onto the forest floor again. Damn thing never did heal right. He’s been walking for a while. Must’ve been. He lays on the ground and tries to remember. It hurts to breathe. A lot.

He should spare his knee. Mount up—he can’t. Roach is—what did he…

The horse. It’s… there’s something… He staggers upright and props himself against a tree. He tries to think through the dense fog in his head. This isn’t right. He has to

has to… do—

His stomach revolts and he’s retching.

Something in his already cracked head gives way entirely at what he sees in the puddle of sick at his feet. He turns away and stares in a daze at the sun. It does its best to burn the fog away.

The black horse. The black horse is doing this to him—making him slow. Absent. Foggy. (She’s not a horse. That's only her vessel. Her name is-) He freed her and now she’s trapped him. Poisoned him. Like her husband. Betrayer.

He knows he prepared for this. To kill her. He always meant to. But now— But he has to do it now because…

The fog swallows him again.

His gaze drops to the fetid pool at his feet. He’s relieved that the light has almost blinded him. There was something he didn’t want to look at anymore. It made him… upset. This is better. Much better.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning for cannibalism and child death

Eskel doesn’t stray very far west if he can avoid it. He hates it, the whole coast, Redania to Cintra. He hates the grating sound of the Temerian accent and the crush of Novigrad and the overcooked food and the pervasive coastal humidity that rusts his armor while he’s wearing it. He’d pay good money to never cross the Mahakams again. Yet, here he is, deciding on the quickest route to Temeria.

Half the continent is in a froth over what’s happening in Velen. No one he’s talked to can give him the faintest idea of _what’s_ happening, only that something is and there’s no witcher to take care of it. The breath freezes in Eskel’s lungs and his heart wobbles at the thought.

Geralt should be taking care of the coast.

Eskel was raised in a forbidding mountain fortress by some of the hardest sons of bitches to ever walk the earth. They taught him many, many lessons, not the least of which were survival tactics. _If it can hurt you, it is a threat_ , Master Varin growls at Eskel (and Geralt and a whole courtyard full of scrawny pups) across nine decades. _You never give your back to a threat. You never walk away. You face it. You get in close._

 _You hunt the little bitch down and make it sorry_ , was a later Lambert variant, not out of keeping with the philosophies of the School of the Wolf. So when the ache in his chest that sharpens with every bit of coastal hysteria can no longer be ignored, he does exactly what he was taught to do in a frigid mountain keep. He turns to face it and he moves closer.

Scorpion is a good boy and doesn’t give him any shit for retreading the road he walked not an hour ago. He simply ambles back to the Pontar when Eskel asks, serene as only an animal can be. If only securing passage from Graywharf could be so easy.

Graywharf is a port town, to stretch the meaning of the words to their breaking point. It's little more than a glorified series of…old gray wharves set on the Aedirn bank of the Pontar. However you want to call it, Graywharf is familiar in its inhospitality. All his favorite indignities in one convenient place. He eats out of his own supplies because the locals won’t sell food to him. He repairs his own gear because the blacksmith “don’t deal with mutants or their filthy coin.” He sleeps in the stables because the innkeep is worried he’ll— He has no idea what the old bastard is worried about, if he's being honest. The son of a bitch hadn’t been very clear before bending enough to allow Eskel to bed down in the stable with Scorpion for double the usual rate.

It doesn’t matter. He can put up with a little rudeness if it gets him where he needs to go all the sooner.

He moves from ship to ship, dock to dock, captain to captain. If it’s not his snake eyes, it’s that one needle-like eyetooth that sneaks out of the notch in his lip; and the one time it’s neither of those, it’s Scorpion. It pains him to let that boat go without him, but the horse is worth at least as much as everything else he owns combined. Not to mention that to hear Geralt tell it, a walking tour of the coast is drawn out suicide. _Th’ fuckin’ brigands there—Eskel, you don’ unnerstand. They’re a, a... a whole damn cavalry ‘cept there’s no army they report to._ Granted, they’d been pretty deep in their cups and Geralt was prone to dramatics anyway, but it isn’t something he wants to test. He’s not feeling good about his luck these days.

It takes another day and a half, but he finally gets a berth with Captain Sorvag and his thinly disguised band of river pirates. Their attempts at ‘clothes non-pirates definitely wear’ are appalling. They sort of remind him of Lambert, and if Eskel were in a better mood, he might’ve tried to befriend them. Sorvag, on the other hand, seems self-important enough to miss the appeal of playing dress up. He’s also not as bright as he thinks he is, so Eskel deems it necessary to clarify a few things. “You’re not going raiding, right?”

“I am a legitimate bus-”

“Sorvag, I don’t fucking care. I just need to know if this is a trading vessel _right now_.”

Sorvag sniffs, nose in the air. A picture of pure affront. As if the tattoos brazenly exposed on his arms and neck are incidental art choices. The fucking balls on this one. Eskel almost admires him for it. “Yes,” he says, all insulted dignity. “We are a trading ship _right now_.”

“And for the foreseeable future?”

Sorvag heaves an enormous sigh, and Melitele's tits, the man missed his calling as a mummer. “All the way to Oxenfurt,” he declares with a sneer.

For that, Eskel gives him a look at a real sneer. Professional grade, as it were. Sorvag can’t decide what to look at, the mauled meat of his right cheek or the discomposing array of human and nonhuman teeth exposed by his parted lips.

Lambert always takes great pains to point out that getting distracted from _monster fangs_ a foot from their faces goes to show the survival instincts of the average human. This is typically done while bearing his own matched set of human teeth in a shit eating grin. (Aside from being a jackass, Lambert is also young. He hasn’t had enough teeth knocked out of his fool head for the replacements to affect his smile. But they will, if he’s lucky enough to live that long.)

And yeah… there it is, the sharp tang of fear sweat beginning to waft off the captain. Something impossible for a human nose to notice at this distance, let alone parse. But Eskel’s witcher nose parses just fine, thanks, and he lets that knowledge creep into his expression before turning on his heel to collect Scorpion from the clapboard stable they’re sharing.

The voyage to Oxenfurt is peaceful and interminable. He gambles with the crew, careful not to win _too_ often (but enough to recoup his trip.) He drinks with Sorvag and his first mate, Cal, and he’s careful never to get drunk. And he keeps company with a restless Scorpion, careful to tell him he’s the very best boy in the world. It’s hard to say who’s more relieved when they dock: the captain, the crew, or the horse.

For his own part, he’s forced through the ringer between one breath and the next as he steps off the gangplank. The vile sweetness of fisstech sweat gathers on the back of his tongue and tries to choke him. Why’re there always so many addicts by the docks? The barrage of noise generated by so many humans _existing_ in proximity breaks him out in gooseflesh. Hundreds of heartbeats and breaths vie for his attention; and then the bastards have the nerve to talk on top of it all.

He takes a moment to acclimate, covering his unease by checking Scorpion’s legs and shoes. It’s not worse than any other city he’s been in, but stepping right into the center rather than walking in from the outskirts makes a difference. Cities in general have always overwhelmed Eskel more easily than either of his brothers. With Geralt being more sensitive than them both by a mile, he can’t even claim it’s because the mages fucked up and built Lambert with dull senses. (He does anyway, but it’s untrue which makes it lousy ammunition.)

He lets the familiar prickle of Scorpion’s hide under his fingers soothe him as he focuses on their heartbeats. Two steady islands of sanity amidst the frantic rhythm of scores of human hearts. Head clearing, he starts to plan. He knows Geralt has contacts within the city, so while he’s here, he might as well ask around. After a few easier breaths, he searches out a stable for Scorpion and heads for the university.

It doesn’t take long to hit his first wall. It's strange, though. Within the wooden walls of the academy, people are more curious of him than they are disgusted. Several even approach him with offers to help. It puts his hackles up, which is stupid, but it _feels like a trap_ . They’re helpful, though. Quick to answer his questions then pepper him with some of their own. When one of them asks if he has _tapeta lucida_ (sounds familiar, yeah) and, if he does, whether it blurs his night vision (...no?), he realizes he’s been waylaid by medical students. Their attention isn’t threatening, per se. After all, they’re frail little bookworms and he’s a century old master witcher. But the last people to be so interested in the ins and outs of his biology were the alchemists of Kaer Morhen and…well.

He extricates himself as best he can, and manages to find some practitioners of the arts to talk to, instead. They ask him questions too, but at least these are about his hunts. The majority of _these_ academics aren’t the least bit afraid of him, either. Huh.

The only thing he can think is that Dandelion must’ve talked the witchering guilds up enormously among his own people. Or that Geralt charmed the pants off a fair few of them the last time he was through, figuratively or literally. Knowing Geralt, both.

He makes a note to ask his brother about the brunet archivist that keeps throwing him flirtatious looks from across the library. The thought sours when he thinks about having to ask the archivist for a last glimpse of his brother, instead.

It turns out that Geralt’s pet bard isn’t in residence for the time being. Not teaching this semester. He makes the mistake of asking where Dandelion might be. The overhelpful masters of poetry start telling him something about a Novigrad brothel and organized crime that Eskel stops listening to a quarter of the way through in self-defense. There are some things a man does not need to know, and what Geralt’s friends get up to when he’s not around is high on that list.

Despite being unusually pleasant, the academy is a bust in the end. None of them has seen Geralt in the last year.

He takes his leave and checks the job boards, because some habits cannot be resisted. Lo and behold, there’s no message from Geralt tacked there— not that he expected there would be. It’s not common practice anymore. Not enough witchers left. Leaving small advisements for your kin passing through is nothing but a waste of paper, ink, and time these days.

There aren’t any outstanding contracts, though, which he takes for a good sign. He’s disappointed when the locals inform him that they weren’t fulfilled by a white haired witcher. His spirits do brighten a bit, though, when they add that the witcher who had been working the area was a dark haired Wolf like himself, but balding.

Lambert is going to shit a _brick_ when next they meet.

He checks around a bit more, to be sure his little brother is no longer in the area. It’s not all that strange for Lambert to drift this far south in a lean year, though he prefers to leave the river banks to Geralt if he can help it. The Pontar is broadly where all their ranges overlap. Their ranges aren’t hard and fast, either, seeing as Eskel is here and not, say, Gulet. The only real restriction is on Geralt, who is forbidden from threading Kovir and Poviss for… sorceress reasons. Though Eskel was asked to avoid the north-westernmost kingdoms, too, for very different but equally urgent sorceress reasons—but that’s more of a preventive measure.

As it is, there isn’t much more for him to find in Oxenfurt, save that the general unease in Velen has spilled from one side of the Pontar to the other.

In contrast, there is a startling number of notices waiting for attention not even a mile away, in Holloway. Contracts from all over Velen, which speaks chillingly of a witcher’s neglect. The alderman of Lurtch is requesting help with a well inexplicably full of bad water. Mulbrydale is the site of several disturbing and gruesome murders. Toderas needs to be cleared of necrophages, _again_ (emphasis not his own.) The populace of Lindenvale appears to be going mad in fits and starts. Benek’s crops are rotting in fields turning into poisonous marsh for no conceivable reason. And around all this, amid all this, Geralt is _nowhere_ to be found. (Not a lot of reasons for a witcher to stop taking work. Most of them are…permanent.)

The havoc caused by the loss of a single witcher fills him with an evil satisfaction. He’ll feel ashamed later, but right now he’s too heart-sore to be anything but vindictive. Witchers don’t have gods, but they do have a deep respect for comeuppance.

After a staggering amount of talking and, at the last, a judicious application of _axii_ , he gets a look at the local militia’s maps. He needs to get a handle on Velen as a whole, if only for navigation purposes; and he needs to plot the epicenter of the apparent crisis. If Geralt is anywhere, it’ll be the middle of a disaster.

It takes several careful rereadings to sort the unrelated jobs from the spreading trail of… he’s not sure yet, but he senses a shape in it. Unfortunately, no true epicenter presents itself. It’s more of a bleed. It pools and leaks haphazardly across several regions of Velen (and what charming names these regions have.) The worst of it seems to have settled over the Descent, with tendrils drifting so far as Grayrocks and the Mire. His eyes drift to the pockmarked, awkward shape of Crookback Bog. It seems impossible that such a large area could be a focal point, but every series of incidents he traces leads to its borders.

He looks at the substantial stack of related notices at his elbow. There’s not much commonality between them, all told. If Eskel hadn’t half expected there was something larger at play, he wouldn’t have put it together until much later himself. Easy to see why, despite the frantic peasantry, it hasn’t escalated to a regional contract. Easy to see how a witcher, early on the ground, wouldn’t see what was boiling up beneath his feet until it ki—until it was too late. 

His stomach growls, distracting him from pursuing that line of thinking any further. Instead, he spends a moment doing mental arithmetic. He’s trying to decide if eight local contracts pays like a single territorial one. Not that he has any means of taking it to the powers that be to try to make it one; most of his friendly government contacts are in Lyria and Kaedwen.

Right. Eight locals pays less, a lot less. But not drawing the attention of the nobility is its own reward, he consoles himself, not believing a word.

* * *

It turns out that Geralt wasn’t being dramatic. The bandits of Velen are all but a fully equipped cavalry. Most of them former soldiers turned brigand, hunting the weak in packs, shearing the peasantry to the last oren.

What Geralt had failed to mention, though, was the cannibals. Or the packs of feral children scrapping in the woods like dogs over a bone. Or, as a matter of fact, the packs of feral dogs scrapping over unfortunate feral children.

Eskel’s been in war zones. Hell, he was in one not three weeks ago. Lormark is a shambles and war pays well for witchers. He knows the things people do when blood and death and suffering hang in the air for months on end. He’s carved his way through desperate men to protect his own life. He hadn’t expected Temeria would recover in a single year of peace. He knows better.

But this is more than that. There’s something about this place. Acts of violence seem to warp and spin out of control, so that lone thieves stand and fight like Skelliger beserkers instead of fleeing to seek softer targets.

He cuts them down to a man, in a pointless waste of lives. When he loots their corpses, he finds most of them well-fed. Several even have coins in their purses. These were not desperate men. It makes no fucking sense.

The longer he spends in Velen, the more he notices. There's an insidious, creeping rottenness here that latches onto muscle and mind. A sickness that pushes even a simple highway robbery into atrocity. It’s not long until he starts to feel the pressure of it himself. When he puts his steel sword to work again—this time on a group of men trapping the wild children in snares and dressing them like fucking rabbits—it's this sickness that carries him. 

The shrill scream draws him, but it's too late. The child is already dead when he gets there, big eyes leaking their last few terrified tears. He kills that man then and there, then follows his trail back to a camp tucked into a ravine. It takes Eskel a solid second to understand what he sees. His eyes dart from the sad, spitted thing over the fire to the wires strung with curing sides of meat, all the wrong shapes and sizes for wholesome game.

He wades in before he makes the conscious decision, and the collision of his sword against another is almost a shock. Soon, the roaring of his own blood in his ears drowns out the clash of metal and his second thoughts. He hunts in the surrounding woods for any stragglers. He finds the last one on the trail to the camp, on his way back to join his fellows. Eskel sees to it that he does.

When he’s through, he _ignis_ the entire camp. The chasm it's hidden in is bald of vegetation and well contained, but he’d have done it if it were in the center of a parched field of grass.

Once he’s far enough away that a change in the wind won’t give him a noseful of half roasted infant, he makes camp. It’s early, the sun is still above the horizon. But he’s got to meditate and he’s not sure how long it’ll take to get a hold of himself again. A rattled witcher is a dangerous witcher, and right now Eskel is of a mind to burn the whole province down and start over. He’d be a damned hero.

So, better to avoid human settlements tonight. He needs to be sure he’s in a safe frame of mind to deal with the people of Velen and whatever their reception of him might be. He settles on his knees and tries to still his mind. It takes most of the night.

By dawn, he feels in control again, though he can’t quite shake the visceral disgust he has for the whole area. He finds his way to Mulbrydale, chosen as the nearest, most likely connection to Geralt’s dea—to Geralt. In general, homicide investigations aren’t a witcher’s purview, but these murders do sound like they might fall in line with his usual fare.

First thing he notices is the horses. There aren’t any. Plenty of dogs underfoot, and a few cows in the pasture. Cats and geese hiss at him from behind fence posts. But there’s not a single, sway back plow mare in the village. He starts his investigation with the alderman, who reveals that all four of the work horses ran off on the night of the first murder. Not a one has come back. Eskel grunts in sympathy. A loss like that will hurt Mulbrydale in the seasons to come.

The details of the murders, such as he can get from the mouths of the villagers, are ugly. Four men, brutally mutilated. Chests caved in. Bones in hands and arms shattered. Mouths agape and ragged. Bloody lips stretched thin and curled under themselves like paper—that one’s not a mutilation, more a side effect of a drawn out death. Eskel’s seen similar before. It can happen with certain kinds of suffocations, due to the victim trying to open the mouth wide enough to suck in air that isn’t there. They end up shredding their own faces in the effort.

Of course, Eskel can only assume asphyxiation is the cause of death. The bodies of the victims are already buried and humans have this _thing_ about disinterment, so he doesn’t bother to suggest it.

He tries to be gentle as he questions the wives and children of the dead men. Their sorrow is crushing. Even his emotionless witcher act takes a beating in the face of the grief of an old woman collapsing in on herself as she talks. A sturdy old biddy, now wrecked and under the care of her daughters. Their care won’t amount to much, he knows; he can hear the heartbreak killing her. It’s in her heartbeat and the rhythm of her breaths. She’ll join her husband in the ground within the week. He can’t help but feel relieved for her. 

The families offer up what little they know to him.

“—no, master, he came to bed that night. They all called him a worthless boozer, but he was good to our girls!” 

“—just her and their daughter, Irma now. Poor woman. Lost so much, and now her husband...” 

“I didn’t… I didn’t see his body. My son told me it was too much for an old woman to bear. I—”

It’s terrible and very tragic. And worst of all, these words that hurt so much to speak don’t even tell him anything.

There are no witnesses to the actual killings. All four of the murder sites are within the settlement and have been compromised to the point of uselessness. Without a corpse, the conclusions he can draw are few. At this rate, he’ll have to wait for another body to drop, which is sure to delight the alderman.

So he’s off to a great start. He talks his way around the village some more, knowing it won’t get him anywhere, but he has to try. Someone finally mentions a cunning woman, and he feels a glimmer of hope—until he reaches her cottage. Word was that witches are hard to come by this close to Radovid’s madness, even after his death. But here’s this one, bold as brass, not a mile from the village proper. She’s even got a shingle up. Foolish.

Or powerful.

He gives his neck a satisfying crack and rolls his shoulders and announces himself with a knock. The door rattles in its frame and no response comes from within. From without, though… 

There’s the faint whiff of a spell, followed by a rustle of plants behind and to the left of him, and then a warm, accented voice. “Master Witcher. I have been waiting for you.” He _just_ manages not to throw an _igni_ in her face. She’s powerful, then, to be tossing obfuscation around like that. Though startling a witcher isn’t known to increase life expectancy, so foolish is still on the table.

He turns. And blinks. She’s Ofiri. The drape of her shawls hides most of her from his gaze, exposing only part of her face and the hand holding the folds of colorful fabric close. He’s intrigued by the intricate pattern that spills from her hidden palm onto the back of her hand. It’s not stark black like the tattoos he’s used to, more a subtle red-brown that alternately blends and contrasts the delicate floral sprays with her dark complexion. Eskel’s no stranger to pain, but that must’ve been a hell of a thing to sit still for. His own hand aches in sympathy.

He draws his eyes back to her face as she loosens her hold on her head covering. She wears almost as much kohl as Ciri, impossible to believe though it may be. She gestures to her door with a curtained arm, and they begin an awkward little dance that ends with her on the other side of the _closed door_ (what the hell?) and him feeling hard done by on the doorstep. Before he has time to get properly indignant though, the door swings open again, and she waves him in. “Enter and be welcome, stranger. Let us speak and be strangers no longer. I am called Prisha.”

He answers in kind with the small bit of Ofiri he knows, drawing a delighted smile from her. His stomach heats. There is a certain pleasure in making a beautiful woman happy that even witchers are not immune to. Her wards playfully tense and flex around him as he crosses her threshold, making his gut tighten and his dick twitch. He’s grateful for his codpiece. Walking into a strange woman’s home visibly aroused is uncouth even by savage northern standards.

“Won’t make many friends here, if you start befriending witchers,” he tells her, kneeling on a pillow beside her by the hearth.

She shakes her head as she unwinds her shawls, revealing yet more vibrant swathes of fabric, though these look more like the illuminations he’s seen in anthropology texts instead of a mismatched bid for warmth. A saree, he thinks it’s called. The tattoo is on both of her palms, blooming over her fingers and flirting with the bones of her wrists. It’s a thing of beauty.

“A hard land in hard times,” she tells him. “It makes for hard people. They forget that strength has no need of cruelty. In time, they will remember.” It’s impossible to guess the age of any sorceress, but the sentiment makes her seem very young.

Or, he’s a bitter old witcher who finds optimism quaint. “I hope so,” he agrees. “You said you were waiting for me.”

She nods and looks at him, evaluating. “Yes. But I was not waiting for you, exactly. My countrymen spoke glowingly of a white Wolf Witcher.” Eskel snorts. There goes Geralt, making friends with everyone again. The bastard. She grins and it’s very charming; he can’t help but smile a little in return. She doesn’t flinch at the sight, which is even more charming. “Perhaps you have changed your hair, Master Wolf?”

“‘Fraid not.” He’s loath to turn the discussion to his gruesome business, lonely wretch that he is, but there are four butchered men in the ground and he’s gone and made them his problem. “You’re waiting—” he turns to the door as he senses the approach of a human. Small, by the sound of it; a woman or a teenaged boy. Prisha follows his gaze. The door opens, and sure enough, a woman enters. Prisha’s eyes warm, and Eskel knows that smitten look anywhere. “Oorja! Meet our guest, the witcher Eskel. Master Eskel,” here, her mouth curls just so, “my sister, Oorja.”

“Be welcome, no longer speak a stranger,” Oorja fumbles, lowering her head. She’s wearing proper northern clothes, much more appropriate for the coolness of a Temerian summer than her, ahem, _sister’s_ beautiful drapes of silk and linen. She has tattoos on her hands as well. Her fingertips are reddish-brown all the way to the fold of her first knuckle then the ink twists over the backs of her fingers like engraved rings.

Eskel wants to compare the patterns and ask questions, but he is not, in fact, here for a cultural exchange. “I am grateful for your generous welcome. I bid you welcome to the Northern Realms,” he offers in Common Nordling, careful not to mumble even with his gimp mouth.

“I am grateful,” Oorja returns, and smiles. “I am...eating you…” she frowns, deep in the struggle of a new language. She gives up after a moment and says something rapid and musical to Prisha, who responds in kind. She looks from her lover to Eskel, then back again, flushes and ducks back out the door without another word.

He turns his attention to Prisha, who is staring after Oorja with her lip between her teeth, obviously besotted all over again. A huff of laughter escapes him; he remembers those days. That brings her attention back to him, so he picks up where he left off. “You were waiting for my-” he lets his own mouth quirk, “brother, the White Wolf of your countrymen’s stories.”

“Ah.” Her eyes twinkle with comradery.

“Mm. Yeah. So I got to thinking that whatever’s happening around here might have something to do with—” His good mood leaves him with ashes in his mouth.“With his, uh, I mean, with Geralt’s, that is…” He subsides, tongue-tied and humiliated.

All it takes is a single syllable to choke him into submission. It’s a simple word, ‘death.’ Something that comes for everything that lives. Even witchers. Especially witchers. But he doesn’t want to say it to her. He doesn’t want to admit what he expects to find out loud. Words have power.

Her expression chills into neutrality, and she answers his incoherent non-question without missing a step. “Your Geralt was not here, before or after the killings, nor among the dead. I would have known him.” He dare say she would have, too, seeing how she pegged him from far enough away to magically confound his senses without his noticing.

“What d’you think is doing the killing?”

“As I told the headman, it is not a monster. It is a madness.” That spins his thoughts back to the violence of yesterday, and he wonders if she feels it, too. Does Velen’s slimy siren song creep into her unguarded thoughts?

Prisha frowns and shifts on her cushion. “Human hands have made four widows. He will not believe it. ‘It must be a beast, no man did this!’ he says.” She shrugs an elegant shoulder. “He is right at the last, I think.”

That gets Eskel’s attention. “What’s that mean? You think—what? The wives did it?” Those women were as bereaved as any he’s ever seen. Nobody can fake that sort of misery, not to a witcher.

“Perhaps. I am not sure. But I do not think it matters anymore. It will not happen again.” She sounds so sure.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because there is no one left to kill. You talked to them, did you not? What did you find?”

He considers his answer then gives a shrug of his own. “Four men, different ages, all married, all with children of varying ages. Plenty of guys like that still around.”

She shakes her head. “No, there are no more husbands with three daughters.”

“What?” Eskel squints. “They didn’t. Have three daughters, I mean. Not all of ‘em. Not even most.”

“But they did,” she assures him. “It is true that only the shopkeeper has three living daughters.”

Oh, he does not like this. “That’s… really specific.” And impossible to verify. ‘Sorry to interrupt your mourning, goodwife. I know you said you had one daughter, but what about dead ones? Stillbirths and miscarriages count.’ There was being thorough and then there was being an evil motherfucker. He has no choice but to believe Prisha. He can’t _see_ a reason for her to mislead him, but he finds sorceress logic impenetrable in the first place. Seems he’s just shit out of luck on this whole contract. Wonderful. “Why?”

“I do not know.” She looks as baffled as he feels.

They subside into contemplative silence. There’s something here. ‘Mother’ and ‘madness’ are tapping away at the back of his skull and he keeps associating Geralt without knowing why. He tries to remember the recountings of the last few years’ hunts and misadventures. Nothing useful comes to mind. He’s always so drunk by the end of the telling he hardly remembers anything but Geralt’s amused voice putting him to bed.

“Oorja tried to invite you to supper, earlier. She has a brace of rabbits, if you would like to join us,” Prisha ventures.

“I… that’s very kind but—” Like a fool, Eskel almost says _he needs me_. Dead men don’t need anything. That’s what dead means. He doesn’t quite believe it, but there’s no rush. He’ll have the rest of his miserable life to get used to the idea.

Prisha looks sympathetic, like she heard the words anyhow, and for a moment he’s overcome with rage. How dare this well-fed, happy woman with her well-fed happy lover sit here in her honeymoon cottage and sympathize with _him_ , monstrous Eskel of No Fucking Place Anymore, here to seek the body of his—

He releases a slow breath and color starts to return to his vision. Prisha’s still looking at him, compassion and patience writ all over her beautiful face. He has to get out of here. He can feel it again, like in the bald canyon not twenty-four hours ago. What the hell is _wrong_ with him?

Besides everything. Besides Geralt being gone.

“Thank you for your help,” he manages. “I can’t stay.” He can’t. He feels dangerous. “Tell Oorja her Common is very good,” he says, rising from his cushion. Prisha is watching him with furrowed brows but makes no move and speaks no words. He can only be grateful. A few steps sees him out the door and into the much more breathable evening air.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning for mob violence and animal death

The day is all but spent, and if Eskel hadn’t made such an ass of himself (didn’t feel so loosely moored,) he might have won a bed for himself over supper. Not the first time he ruined his own good luck. He drags himself into the saddle and starts for Lindenvale, next on his tour of Velen. The crowded, dim forest road holds no fear for him, but he keeps a sharp ear out, just in case. 

He’s not _hoping_ to hear the click of arachas mandibles, of course. It’d be nice to stretch his sword arm, is all. He needs to move, to work, to... not watch someone else’s domestic bliss, when all he has to look forward to are cold camps and lonely winters. Centuries of them.

It’s another night of sleeping rough—meditating rough. It’s not half as restorative as it was the night before, either. He’s so distracted in the morning, he scorches his oatmeal and dribbles tea down himself like it’s his first day with the new face. There’s no one to see him, but it’s humiliating anyway. 

As he’s throwing dirt over his fire, he hears the noise of a child in distress. He scolds himself about trying to save everyone, but he runs toward the sound all the same. He finds a snare with a weeping, spitting feral boy trapped in it. Releasing him is an exercise in patience, and Eskel ends up having to _axii_ the poor thing to avoid getting bitten. When the kid refuses to go with Eskel—to the nearest settlement or Eskel’s own camp— he gives him what little food he keeps tucked in his pockets, and lets him go. Eskel can’t rightly force the issue when the kid’s mistrust of men is more than justified. 

As a final indignity, the sky, which has been a threatening shade of gray all morning, opens up, and dumps chilling rain on him as he heads back to Scorpion. What begins as a summer rain whips into a true storm before long, wind gusting grit and water into his face. He’s soaked through and freezing with it. 

Which is all to say that, by the time he dismounts at a hay rack in Lindenvale, he hopes the job here involves hitting something. Hard. Many times. 

His foul mood gets fouler as conversation stops and heads turn with his every step. He wants to snarl at them, give ‘em a real show. Instead, he keeps his movements human slow and his face as close to neutral as he can get anymore, with half the muscles knotted up.

His presence is a silencing bubble, spreading behind him like a wake as he heads to the center of the village. This particular reaction is a decent sign that his timing is impeccable. _Something_ has happened here, but he can’t smell any evidence of monsters or run-of-the-mill violence. 

The weight of the townsfolk’s stares are starting to make that one spot between his shoulders itch.

He finds the alderman by the tavern, looking like someone walked over his grave. “Master Witcher,” he says, voice faint and almost lost beneath the hiss of the rain. The muscle between Eskel’s shoulders is jumping, and he feels a looming threat. But, fuck him, there’s nothing _wrong._ There isn't anything out of place. Nothing sounds amiss, discounting the fearful silence of the humans. He can still hear birds singing and dogs snoring underneath the threatening mutter of thunder. There’s no scent of blood, just human anxiety. He sweeps the village with his eyes again, but the only thing to see is a group of wild horses rolling and playing on a not too distant hillside. The alderman speaks again, in that same paper thin voice, “You should go.”

He should not. There’s work for him here, plain as day. “What’s wrong? Your notice said you needed a witcher. I think you’re right.” The wind picks up, howling low and mournful between the huts, pushing sheet after blinding sheet of water into his eyes.

“It’s too late. She was already here.”

“Who was?”

“We never knew she could come this far from the bog.”

“Who?”

“Black Beauty.” The name itself is meaningless, but it drops like a stone into the silence and _now_ Eskel can sense it. Like realizing you’re an inch deep in water that’s seeped up around you, but only after you hear the splash. The magic must’ve been welling up under his boots the entire time. He’s never _heard_ of anything like this. His medallion starts to buzz and he wants to laugh.

It sort of feels like a Place of Power, if it were somehow sentient instead of an inert facet of nature. Sentient and angry. He’s seen godlings and other land guardians throw their weight around, but none of them have ever mustered power on this scale. 

The population of Lindenvale is still staring at him, but now their expressions are slack instead of wary. There is an intelligence behind them, watching him, assessing him as a threat with two score stolen eyes. The brush of its magic feels diseased, barely controlled and overwhelmingly insane.

It’s choosing to use puppets to deal with him instead of direct confrontation. Could be telling. Could mean it’s physically vulnerable. Or that it’s not physical at all.

His eyes slide from one motionless figure to another, all around the square. The villagers are ranged around, watching him, motionless. It’s the stillness of a ghoul horde the split second before it leaps. The air sings with potential violence as the storm ramps up and throws lightning into the hills like a badly aimed dagger.

He’s outnumbered, for sure, but he’s not concerned for himself. They’re still only humans, even if they’re supernaturally controlled. Poorly fed, unarmed, untrained, and (some of them) half grown humans, at that. The phrase _Butcher of Blaviken_ floats to the top of his thoughts and now he’s trying to come up with words that start with 'L'. The rain redoubles and runs down his nose and chin in streams. He’s never been grateful for his disfigurement before, but the scars are channeling water like river beds. It’s keeping the one eye clear, at least. 

_The Lynchman of Lindenvale_ , his useless fucking mind supplies. Is this what hysteria feels like? 

He doesn’t want to kill these poor people. This is not their fault. This is not something they are choosing to do. But the mad power rippling around them is irresistible as a noose, and making it clear that he’s next for the gibbet. 

Then one of them—all of them?—sighs, and they’re off to races. Eskel slams an _axii_ front and center and feels it roiling on the surface of their minds instead of penetrating. He narrows his focus to one target and shoves hard, and the alderman gives in beneath the strain and turns on his neighbors. Eskel has his steel sword halfway out of the sheath before he can stop himself. _Not killing them!_ With a grimace, he releases the hilt and brings his fist down in an overhand drop, letting another attacker’s skin split under his gauntlet.

He overcompensates, pulls the blow too much. Even so, it should have at least slowed the man down. Instead, the man rocks with it, no hesitation or surprise at all. He lets the punch roll off and keeps coming. Shit.

Eskel lashes out with a foot and doesn’t pull this blow enough. He bares his teeth when he feels the poor bastard’s knee snap beneath his heel. Fuck. The man goes down but there’s still plenty more people advancing on him—plenty more livelihoods to ruin. He sweeps _aard_ through them and then vaults himself over their staggering forms.

He spares a second to eye the rest of the melee and it is haunting. There is no screaming. No taunts. Only the bone shaking crack of the sky pummeling the earth over and over. Where the riot is not directly engaged with Eskel, it’s turned inward and tearing itself apart. For a bunch of untrained peasants, they’re making some pretty large strides toward sheer, unbridled violence.

Watching a bunch of humans—the frail creatures he was ruined and rebuilt to protect—do this to themselves is breathtaking. It’s sickening in a way he can’t explain. Explanation or no, he knows fresh nightmare imagery when he sees it, and he’s not looking forward to experiencing this again. (And again. And again and again.)

He gets a few steps toward where he left Scorpion before the mob tries to draw him back into the eye of conflict. He resists and ends up shattering a young woman’s nose in the process. He hopes, for her sake, that she’s already married because it’s not going to heal pretty. He pushes through the fray, relying on _yrden_ and _aard._ (His signs can be gentler than his hands, which he supposes he already knew, but he’s never had it thrown in his face before.)

With a last burst of _aard_ , he breaks out of the pack, trying not to trample anyone on the ground while he’s at it. The mob is not so careful, and he can smell the resulting loose bowels even as he scrambles full tilt for the edge of the village. He whistles to Scorpion as he flies past rather than waste time mounting him. They run side by side for a moment before Scorpion pulls ahead while Eskel deals with a group of three that had been tearing at themselves on the outskirts. They don’t resist his _axii_ at all; he can hold all of them under at once without issue. Which means there is either a focal point by the tavern that was shunting his magic away, or whatever is happening is winding down.

He has no intention of waiting around to see which it is. He sprints into the hinterland, but it’s clear that he isn’t being pursued within moments. He slows his pace, but keeps moving, wanting to blow off the rest of his unused fight response. Scorpion gets nervous when Eskel comes back jittery. It makes sense, he figures, for a prey animal to take notice when the local, friendly predator is on edge. 

Eventually, the ravine he’s jogging through is blocked by a collapsed bridge. At its foot lies a horse carcass. It’s familiar. Blaze faced bay with white stockings. 

The color drains out of his vision. It’s Roach. Close to the village, the opposite side of where Eskel’d entered. Where a man might leave a horse if he were worried about his welcome.

She still has her saddle on. Her saddlebags, her halter—everything is in place. She’s all tacked up for a quick getaway, and he knows that Geralt leaving all that valuable leather behind is as likely as Eskel sprouting wings. The dam in his chest gives a terrible, painless crack. _Widower_ , he thinks blankly. A human word he’s been turning over in the back of his head since he first heard of trouble on the coast. He can’t make sense of it though, can’t remember what it means while staring at the ruins of his century of life. For a mad moment, he considers walking back into Lindenvale.

With a breath he steadies his pinwheeling mind. _Your job is to think, pup, not get all wound up,_ he hears Vesemir admonish over the thud in his temples. Eskel exhales. And thinks.

Witchers aren’t known for their sentimentality. Geralt would have put the old tack on a new Roach, or, if he couldn’t afford a horse, he’d sell it. Therefore—he sucks in another breath and releases it. Therefore, Geralt wasn’t here when she died. Nor after. There’s an obvious conclusion to draw about Geralt’s absence, he thinks hollowly, and some little piece of him is wailing fit to shatter glass. With another breath, he ignores it and keeps looking.

She’s been driven off a cliff. He looks over at a nearby ledge, still showing signs of impact despite running over with muddy rain water. Ten feet high, but it’d be enough, seeing as the fall didn’t kill her outright. The churned ground beneath her tells of prolonged death throes. Her legs are shattered, ribs crushed. No sign of wolves or any other large predator. But it won't surprise him if there are human footprints at the top of the ledge. Not after Lindenvale.

She’s been dead for a while. The reek and the insects make that plain. Not much scavenger activity, though. Strange. But the shape of the few bites that exist are disturbing. The mangled teeth marks were made by some sort of monster, but the alignment and shape of the jaw is all wrong, and the teeth are an incoherent combination of shapes. He’s never seen anything quite like it.

He should be fascinated, taking measurements and making sketches and trying to classify a potential new type of necrophage. Instead, he’s dragging himself to his feet and locking his knees to keep himself upright, mind empty. 

He can’t let himself feel anything, or he’ll start feeling everything. That way lies madness, and he can’t spare any attention on a hunt dangerous enough to kill one witcher already. (The dam he’s been desperately shoring up groans again and turbulent water spills out. His heart beats _alone alone alone alone_ and he can’t see straight for several minutes.)

Poor thing. She deserves better than to be left for scavengers and ghouls. She was a good Roach, took good care of— She was good, and that earns at least a little dignity in death. He grabs the saddlebags and then _igni_ s her. She catches, despite the soaking rain. _Igni_ burns fast and hot. It’ll burn underwater if you’re skilled enough. Eskel’s made his name, if only among witchers, by being just so skilled. Unlike—the dam gives another lurch. 

He walks himself away from the scent of burning horseflesh and the hideous silence spilling out from the village, one careful step at a time. He’s moving like an injured man, and he wonders if he smells wounded, too. Vesemir would be apoplectic over his self-indulgent bullshit. But Eskel’s one of two Wolf Witchers now, and Lambert was never all that worried about the dignity of the school. Eskel is free to be as dramatic as he likes.

So he staggers away, heedless of the picture he makes, and whistles up Scorpion when he finally remembers.

They stop in the lee of a boulder, and Eskel lets the familiar hassle of making camp in the rain take his whole attention. Eventually, he gets the oilcloth up, and he and Scorpion are as comfortable as they can hope to be. He’s collected himself enough to rummage through Geralt’s bags for his journal. There’s bound to be notes about his last (bloody water slips through the cracks in the dam, and Eskel has to shut his eyes) hunt. With any luck, they’ll save him time. That display in Lindenvale made it pretty fucking clear that this mess needs to be resolved, fast. If he dawdles too long, there’ll be no one left to pay him.

The most recent journal entry is about a chort hunt, which is no help at all. There is a small note in the corner, though. (Geralt’s stream of conscious approach to bestiary write-ups always did drive Lambert to drink.)

_Yrden by Downwarren._

He flips back through the book by the firelight, dragging his fingers over careful strings of runes and their hesitant translations. Diagrams of cave systems snake over several pages. Sketches of myriad curiosities peep out from margins and headers. If he buries his face in his hands just to catch his breath after finding his own name written in entry after entry ( _...tell Eskel… show Eskel… Eskel will love…_ ) Scorpion will never tell.

He’s looking for a reference page for Places of Power. A map of Velen’s, if he’s very fortunate. Instead, he spots the word Downwarren in an entry from about a year ago. A job from three sisters—from the sparse language, it’s hard to tell what they are exactly, other than inhuman. Geralt never names them individually or even applies the collective names the locals use more than once. A telling choice, in its own way. He’d even call it overcautious, if he hadn’t had a taste of what these things can do not a few hours ago.

These three sisters sent Geralt to kill a spirit of some kind. He freed it in exchange for the lives of a few children, instead. Of course, he did. Always was a soft touch for kids. (His chest squeezes dangerously and all he can do is lean back against the boulder and breathe.) It’s the addendum that gets his attention, though.

 _She kilt all of Downwarren but eldrman. Says it was a madness tht came over them. Made them kill eachother. Baron too thick to take it srsly. Don’t know how she did it. Why not alderman?_ Then, with a different pencil, likely written sometime later: _The ear._

It doesn’t mean a whole lot to Eskel at the moment, but he knows that this is what he’s looking for. Crammed in a margin, smeared to near illegibility, is a name written in the glyphs they used to employ in the labs of Kaer Morhen. He marks the page with a blade of grass and sits back to think.

Three non-human sisters—three _daughters_ —send a witcher to kill some sort of feminine spirit under a hill. Their mother? (Pure speculation, but…) Whom they imprisoned after they failed to kill her. Why? He thinks of the wid—women of Mulbrydale. Mariticide? He searches his memory for any folklore that fits. Or any that goes with the name Geralt has kept secreted away: _Morana._

What about the horses? Four horses fled Mulbrydale the night of the first murder. And now that he thinks of it, there weren’t any horses in Lindenvale, either. Save for the wild herd on the hill. And then Roach. But there’s no mention of horses in Geralt’s write-up at all. He makes a frustrated noise that has Scorpion nudging his cheek in concern. Who taught Geralt to take notes, anyway? His broad strokes approach is worse than Vesemir’s bone dry, iron dense bestiaries.

That’s a filthy lie. Nothing could be worse than slogging through Vesemir’s bestiaries.

He pets the soft nose without thought, turning the whole thing this way and that. He’s got the scent now, can feel it right in front of him. But he just. Can’t. Get to it. “Dammit.”

There’s no chance in hell of meditation tonight, so he forces himself to eat dinner and spreads his bedroll. At least the rain’s let up. He falls into an exhausted sleep after far too long, pockmarked with silent, violent dreams.

He breaks camp in the morning, tired and empty. The thought of breakfast sits in his stomach like lead so Scorpion breaks his fast alone. They set out for Downwarren not long after, and he’s moving the pieces around in his head again. They’re starting to build a picture but none of it, _none of it_ explains what happened to Geralt. If he had died near Roach—Eskel’s knuckles whiten around slack reins—even without a body, there still should have been evidence. Boat loads of it. The results of a witcher fighting for his life usually involve words like ‘blast radius’ and ‘collateral damage.’ Uprooted trees. Shrapnel. Sword furrows. He’d seen no such thing.

Granted, he didn’t search the area extensively. A moment of weakness for which he isn’t proud. Even so, he’d be a piss poor tracker to miss such obvious signs of struggle. And old Master Rennes would’ve sooner shuttered Kaer Morhen himself than let a piss poor tracker take to the Path.

But the length of Geralt’s absence and the interconnected work that’s piled up are damning. A witcher _might_ hole up for a few days—a week at the outside, with a bad enough wound. An injury that required a longer recovery would have killed him outright. Or—he forces himself to release the reins when they begin to bite into his fingers—if a witcher survived such a catastrophic injury, it would have left him too weakened to be anything but prey for carrion eaters.

Though a fight large and long enough to create such an injury tends to leave _evidence_. Of which, Eskel has none.

Round and round he goes, all the way to Downwarren.

He’s not too far out from where the ghost of the settlement is supposed to lie when the wind changes and the scent of fresh death slams into his sinuses like a rogue wave. Scorpion dances under him, unsettled. With a pat to his neck, Eskel dismounts and takes a deep draft of air. Blood. Lots of it. And overwhelming animal panic. Scorpion paws at the ground behind him. “You’re okay, buddy. You’re alright,” he murmurs into a twitching ear as he loosens the saddle girth. Once satisfied that his companion will be alright on his own for a while, he trails after the stink. It leads him into a shallow valley, all ariot with wild flowers and obliging grasses grown to perfect, concealing heights. A pretty place for a lover’s tryst…

If it weren’t for all the dead horses.

Their bulk and spindly legs are awkward and sad in death. Seeing them strewn about like broken toys is unexpectedly painful. Very unexpected, considering he hasn’t blinked twice at plague pits full of innocents in fifty years. He curses his inability to meditate the night before, and clears his head by main force.

His first thought is that a stray lightning bolt must’ve felled the whole damn herd yesterday. Lightning doesn’t tend to strike in valleys, which, in all likelihood, is what the horses were doing here in the first place, but it’s not impossible. There’s no stench of scorched grass, though. No branching scars in the earth. And the blood. There shouldn’t be any blood.

He approaches, trying to find the order of events, but it’s all—it doesn’t make any sense. Burnt manes. Sword wounds. Crushed ribs. And a single pair of boots.

He shakes his head and blinks a few times. He finds himself missing Lambert, who’s the best tracker after the White Wolf himself. And _that_ brings him up short.

One pair of boot prints: big, very deep, long stride. A tall man, heavy, running flat out into the herd. Oh, shit.

He walks the scene, again. The boots come up fast, faster than even a horse can react, and the first one goes down. Decapitated with a single sword strike. 

That one spot between his shoulders starts to itch.

The second corpse is nearby—too nearby. It should have gotten further away even if it was surprised. His fingers twitch into a parody of a witcher’s sign. It takes a lot of magic to slow a horse, though. More than Geralt could ever raise in one—

_Yrden by Downwarren._

Eskel swallows, feeling a foreign twisting sensation in the pit of his stomach. He has to cast his memory back to before the Trials to identify it. Dread.

The boots come up fast, faster than even a horse can react, but Eskel’s a witcher. He draws his steel sword and parries. He completes the turn and stares over his crossguard into eyes the spitting image of his own. Except, of course, that Geralt’s are stark raving mad.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning for gore.

Their blades ring merrily off the walls of the valley.

 _Geralt’s not dead._ The thought pounds in Eskel’s temples as he switches his grip.

He manages to get _quen_ up before Geralt blasts away with _igni_. Vesemir never did manage to beat that bit of telegraphing out of his star pupil. Eskel supposes he should be grateful.

 _Geralt’s not dead._ His fool heart is howling with it.

Geralt hammers away at him from the other side of a shimmering gold veil. It’s not hard to see how this will end. Geralt is the finest swordsman to come out of Kaer Morhen in a century. Eskel’s signs and ingenuity make him a match. One of them is going to die here in this valley. Both, if they’re lucky.

_Geralt’s not dead, but Eskel is going to change that._

The shield collapses and blows outward, but Geralt anticipates the explosion and avoids it. Eskel gets aggressive, driving hard to the left, intent on coming up behind and ending it all in a single strike. Geralt sees him coming and sends him off balance with a kick and _yrden_. The world washes violet and now he’s not moving so much as swimming.

He fights off the sludgy sensation, but not fast enough, judging by the scrape and thud of steel juddering up from his right greave. Son of bitch tried to hamstring him. He rolls away and comes up with _aard_ in hand. Geralt interrupts his cast with a neat little move Eskel’s never seen before. He has time to think that Geralt must’ve created it just for him before the rapid rhythm of attack and parry drags him back under.

Now that the initial ambush is over, he can see that Geralt is in no shape for a protracted fight, or even to resist a strong enough, well-placed _axii_. His breath is coming too hard already. His face is thin, bordering on emaciated. He smells wounded—necrosis, stronger on his left side. It looks like he’s spending as much energy keeping himself upright as he is fighting.

Eskel feints—on any other day, it would _never_ have worked. But today, unbelievably, is Eskel’s lucky day and Geralt falls for it. Two swift steps, he kicks Geralt’s weak knee out from under him, and slips behind him. He gets his hand to Geralt’s temple and lets rip with an _axii_ that burns his fingers on the way out.

It’s not enough to put him down. Geralt resists better than he hoped. He’s still struggling, if not coordinated enough to throw Eskel off him. But it does buy enough time to switch his grip on his sword and bring the pommel down as hard as he dares.

* * *

It takes four blasts of _axii_ and a severe concussion, but Eskel manages to subdue Geralt enough to whistle up Scorpion and get him bound over the saddle with minimal trouble. He is a _little_ concerned about having turned his brother’s brain to soup, but that is a problem for the future, and possibly for Yennefer of Vengerberg.

Right now, he’s still trying to get over that _yrden._ It had nearly cost him his leg. Witchers are resistant to signs in the first place, Eskel more than most. And Geralt, gods love him, is…look, they put him through the Trials a couple times and his signs are _still_ shit. And one of _Geralt’s_ signs had overwhelmed _Eskel_. This might be the most offensive thing to ever happen to him. A hefty dose of a tweaked Petri’s Philtre might make up the difference—if Geralt caught him on a bad day. But it’s pretty obvious Geralt’s in no fit state to manage his toxicity, let alone tinker with complex alchemical formulae.

Eskel scents him with care as he walks them into Downwarren, anyway. Geralt’s typical body smell is overtaken by a miasma of blood, sickness, and filth. It’s hard to get a better read than that. Best as he can gauge, there’s no itchy flash of specter dust or even the least hint of an herbal cocktail. No potions, despite the lip-curling stink of toxic breakdown in Geralt’s sweat. He pinpoints the sour nasty smell of tissue death to Geralt’s left floating ribs, which slips into the top spot of Eskel’s reshuffling priorities.

The buildings are in varying states of collapse, no surprise there. Thatch isn’t the sturdiest roofing material. Eskel chooses the most intact hut to squat in, and settles Scorpion for a rest under a nearby awning.

He hauls Geralt inside and gets to work. The _axii_ s are going to start wearing off soon, so if he wants a look at whatever is festering under that gambeson, he better do it now. Geralt fusses beneath his shaking hands, but he’s not much more trouble than a cranky child.

With a few practiced moves, Eskel exposes a nasty puncture wound nestled in a deep, hideous contusion that spreads up most of Geralt’s left side. The bruising takes a distinct horseshoe shape around the wound. Eskel sucks in a sympathetic breath through his teeth. No wonder Geralt was a shambles after that first mad rush.

Geralt hisses and snaps his teeth as Eskel probes for broken ribs. The puncture weeps rancid-smelling fluid under the gentle pressure of his fingers. “Did a nice job this time, Wolf,” he tells him. “Two broken ribs. That bottom one is getting ready to push through, ‘f you strain it any harder.” In fact, he’s not sure it isn’t already halfway into Geralt’s abdominal wall. He ignores the lick of fear at the base of his spine through the ease of long practice. He inspects the puncture, and sure enough, there’s something lodged there, keeping it open. In a healthy witcher, an injury like this would have started to close over, obstruction or no. Which would have been worse. Maybe. Fuck.

It has to come out, obviously. Whatever it is. And he knows the bad flesh has to be cut away. He’s always been leery of bloodletting, he bleeds often enough without medical intervention, but whatever that hole in Geralt’s side is leaking—that has to be drained away. Right? He doesn’t know. The loose end of that broken rib feels _very_ close to the surface. What if it’s lodged in the muscle there?

These injuries are so far beyond his experience of poultices and stitching that it throws him, leaves him frozen, uncertain where to start. “Looks like Roach got a little of her own back,” he tells Geralt, mind grinding away like a millstone

Geralt is passing from fussy into belligerent the longer he dawdles, so Eskel finishes stripping him, re-tying him as he goes. He finds nothing else that needs treating. Eskel eyes Geralt’s half-starved body with displeasure. No other injuries, at least.

He double-checks his knots. Witchers don’t really do painkillers, and he’s shy of using _axii_ again in such quick succession. He’s sure he couldn’t muster one strong enough, anyway.

This is work for a surgeon if he’s ever seen it, but he only knows two surgeons who’ll work on witchers and both of them are on the other side of a distant mountain range. There must be doctors in Velen, but he doesn’t have the first idea where to look. Even Prisha, whom he might be desperate enough to ask for help despite knowing nothing _of_ her, is too far away. Shit.

Okay. Fuck. Okay. He tosses the last of his water in a pot and follows it up with his smallest knife, a needle, and the pair of rugged tweezers he uses to pull splinters and shrapnel from his own hide, then casts _igni_ on the lot. He turns back to look at Geralt, dirty and greasy and rank. And _alive_. The dam in his chest tries to do something in response to that thought, but he puts a stop to it. He has to focus. Here. Now.

He considers a gag, but there’s no one else around to hear Geralt, so it would be for Eskel’s benefit alone. It feels selfish to deny Geralt his only outlet for pain. Hell, even the mages presiding over the Trials had let the boys scream to their hearts’ content. He knows from personal experience that a child’s screams are much harder on the nerves than those of a grown man. Shriller, for instance.

Right. So. He grabs a bottle of alcohest and pours it over his hands. It stings like a bitch, finding every crack in his weather-beaten palms, slipping under every torn cuticle. He waits it out, wishing, not for the first time, for a higher power to believe in. Not that he’d know what to do with a god’s attention, even if he had it. He’s seen religious types repeat their prayers over and over while counting beads, but he doesn’t know any prayers. He thinks about the litany a bunch of little boys whimpered to themselves a century ago. _Steady eye, steady hand. Steady breath, steady man._ Their voices frail as they struggled through one more lap around the walls, one more sword form, one more nightmare. Not a prayer, though. Closer to a lullaby.

With a soft curse at himself—he’s _still hesitating_ —he grabs the tweezers from the scalding water and seats himself on Geralt’s hips. Geralt isn’t having it, and begins bucking and snapping in earnest. Eskel’s knots hold.

With careful hands, he slips the nose of the tongs into the wound and instantly nudges the object lodged there. Geralt jerks and squeals. Eskel gags. It’s not even blood that comes out at first. He doesn’t have a word for the brackish fluid oozing out beneath his hands. It smells like an open grave. He gets the edge of whatever it is between the tines. Geralt is straining against the ropes, howling in pain and fury. More fluid pours out, with chunks now. “Fuck.” Coagulated blood, maybe. Or rotten tissue. Dead pieces of Geralt. His mouth is hanging open in an effort not to smell it, but it backfires and now he’s tasting it. “Fuck,” he says again, helpless.

He’s still got a good hold of it, though. He pulls, steady pressure, but it’s no use. Geralt screams, devastating as a bruxa, and the object slips free. It rings off the wattle walls and reverberates back over decades. Only this time, Geralt is screaming because _Eskel_ is hurting him.

Alright. 

Alright. 

Slow and steady isn’t going to work. He just has to get it done. Geralt can take it. He grits his courage between his teeth and repositions the tweezers. He catches hold and, once he’s sure of his grip, _yanks._ The tweezers and the…rivet from Geralt’s brigandine, looks like, come free with a sick slurp and a slow dribble of fluid. The scream subsides into a wet sob and then silence, but Geralt hasn’t passed out—he’s trembling, transmitting his agony up the hand Eskel’s spread over his ribs into Eskel’s own chest.

It can’t be helped. Witchers don’t faint from pain. (There’s been ample field testing over the centuries.) Could be that their pain tolerance is too high, but Eskel suspects they were designed that way. Can’t fight off what’s hurting you if you’re out cold. So Geralt’s awake and some level of aware, if quiet for the moment. He understands. Sometimes everything you have is occupied with keeping your heart beating; there’s nothing to spare for things like screaming.

But those soft, pained breaths dominate his hearing for far too long. It’s only when he feels the thud of Scorpion stomping in displeasure that he realizes there is a human heartbeat in Downwarren.

Geralt is still shivering beneath him, expression flayed open with agony. It’s not possible for him to be paler than he normally is, but it seems that way. Paler and infinitely more brittle, like he’ll crumble to powder if Eskel moves wrong. He can’t leave him like this, opened up by Eskel’s own hand and leaking rot and suffering onto a borrowed, rough-hewn floor.

Scorpion stamps his plate-sized hooves again. Geralt watches him with half-lidded eyes. “It can never be easy with you, can it?” he hisses, but it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever said. Geralt _is_ easy—simple and sure—it’s Eskel and his damn dithering that’s always been the problem. Geralt would have been gone and back already, meanwhile Eskel kneels over his broken brother, still fretting.

He snarls and drags himself into motion, freeing up his boot knife for a fast draw on the way to his feet. He slips out the door and follows the heartbeat to ten feet of where Scorpion is huffing grumpily into his hay rack. There’s no one standing in the open, but the quiet breaths coming from the other side of a nearby hut are a dead giveaway. 

“Better come out,” he calls, preparing _quen_ in his off hand despite his conscious intention to save his limited magic. “I can hear you. I know you’re alone.” 

A moment passes. Another. Eskel resigns himself to going back there when someone steps around the corner. “Oorja?”

She has a knife in hand, a massive thing. At least twelve inches, recurved against a thick spine, with a notch that looks like it’s meant to catch and break other blades. She holds it in a fighter’s grip, eyes locked on Eskel’s, like she knows how to use it and she’s not afraid to, either. She doesn’t look at all pleased to see him, which is not exactly surprising. He knows what he looks like right now, and he knows what she must’ve heard coming from the hut.

He’s talked his way back from worse, but that sort of thing requires a shared language, at minimum. He doesn’t have another strategy, though. Even if he wanted to risk pissing off a sorceress by _axii_ -ing her lover, with his reserves being what they are, it’s not on the table. He holds up empty hands to her and offers a closed-mouth smile. She doesn’t return either gesture. “Look, I’m not—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence. She circles around him and moves toward the hut containing his bound and injured brother. The boot knife is out of its sheath and in his hands between one heartbeat and the next. He gets between her and the door faster than she expects, and has to ward off a frantic swipe of her enormous, curved knife with his two inch dagger.

Fortunately, skill _does_ beat size, and he forces her back several steps, accompanied by what he can only imagine is the most paint-peeling vitriol Ofir has to offer. It was instinctive, the quickest solution to a problem, but he should not have drawn on her. Winning her over is going to be all but impossible now.

“Easy, easy. Okay? Just not—not there. Not with that.” He tucks the little blade into the small of his back and shows her empty hands again. “[Please,]” he tries in Ofiri, nodding to her knife. It’s one of the few words he knows, outside of greetings and farewells. “[Please.]”

She shoots him the universal expression for _like hell_ and retains her weapon. A wrenching, wet gasp comes from the hut behind him and it flays him. He stays where he is, planted between Oorja and the hut. She backs off a few more steps, which is more than he hoped for, then reaches up and yanks a necklace from her throat and lets it slide from her grasp. The amulet lands in the dirt, and she stares at him with an air of expectation.

He cocks his head to display his confusion for her. Is this some kind of cultural gesture—the amulet pulses, and vibrates Eskel right along with his medallion. He has _quen_ up and the knife out before the shockwave fades.

Now it’s her turn to look confused, staring at him like he’s a madman, eyes darting from the gold shield to the knife in his hand to his face. “What the fuck was that?” he snarls, pointing his chin to the amulet. She responds with what is probably the same question as she gestures to him. She makes no other move, and Eskel releases the sign, annoyed at having wasted the last of his magic.

They watch each other in tense silence for at least another thirty seconds before a portal blooms beside Oorja. Prisha, dressed in only her saree, steps out, right hand wreathed in crackling magic. Her brow furrows when she catches sight of him, but the magic still plays around her fingers.

She keeps her eyes on him, but addresses Oorja in Ofiri. He returns the knife to his belt, for whatever goodwill it’ll earn him. He knows damn well he’s outclassed now, having left his swords and potions inside. He lets their conversation fade into the background, instead listening for Geralt. His heartbeat is a little thready, and his breathing is a bit fast, but even. Not a surprise, considering the wound Eskel didn’t finish tending. He hopes the knots will be enough to keep Geralt from hurting himself worse.

“What is happening here?” Prisha’s smooth, accented Common cuts through his thoughts.

“She surprised me. I drew a knife. We couldn’t exactly talk it out after that.”

Prisha’s mouth makes an unamused moue. She stands shoulder to shoulder with Oorja, though she lets the magic fade from her grasp. “Oorja said as much. She also said you were torturing someone.” She runs her eyes from his face to his feet and back again, pausing at the gore crusted on his knees and hands.

His lips part then shut.

What can he say? In the most practical sense, Oorja heard exactly what she thinks she heard. There is a man, bound and injured in the hut behind him. Not to put too fine a point on it, but digging around in someone’s torso with a metal implement _is_ torture. People, when they deal with him at all, care about the results of his work and leave the details of that work a mystery. Which is fine by him, since those details can include things like disturbing graves and destroying relics. He’s not used to explaining himself.

The last time he’d had to...was probably to Vesemir, some sixty years ago. The overprotective old coot had wanted to know what Eskel was thinking, letting Geralt pine.

(Eskel had been thinking that he’d been the one doing the pining.)

Geralt, who is lying on a floor in a filthy ghost town. Geralt, skinny and injured and _alive_ , if only Eskel can keep him that way. He remembers thinking he was desperate enough to beg Prisha for help. He feels just as desperate now, but the words don’t come and don’t come and don’t come.

He’s hesitated too long. Prisha moves to step around him. She’s far more dangerous than Oorja. (His instincts are out of control. _He’s_ out of control.) He finds himself with his back against the door, baring his teeth. At least he didn’t draw his boot knife again. “No.” He’s certain it’s the last word he’ll ever say, that she’ll incinerate him and—when she finds what he’s protecting—she’ll put Geralt down like a mad dog.

She doesn’t. She doesn’t give ground like Oorja did, but she doesn’t tear through him either. She stares at him and Geralt _whimpers_ and Eskel can’t stand it. Her shoulders suddenly relax and her expression clears. “Alright.”

The shock of it swats the tension out of the air like a troublesome fly. “What?” It’s not alright. Eskel is being stupid, and this woman is going to kill him, then Geralt, and what happened in Lindenvale is going to happen again, somewhere else. _Nothing is alright_.

“Alright,” Prisha repeats. “Oorja called for me to help. And so I am here. To help.” Her voice is measured, smooth and deep, like he’s a wild, dangerous thing. “A cornered wolf,” she agrees, “protecting his injured mate.” Oh. The tension is back. His shoulders come up around his ears as if that’ll protect his thoughts. He’d somehow forgotten about this particular sorceress habit. “Let us speak in the common way, then. I do not enjoy indulging this ‘habit’ with the unwilling.”

“Yeah,” Eskel says on a long, slow exhalation. He can’t say he blames her all that much. “Alright.” He swallows, fishing for words. (Hesitating. _Hesitating!_ ) This must look ridiculous to Prisha. A big, scary witcher threatened by outstretched hands. But Geralt would understand. And Eskel would do anything for Geralt. “I found him. Geralt, I mean. He’s hurt. Worse than anything I can fix. I’m a stranger, I don’t know where to find a doctor here.” He takes a breath. “I need—I need your help.”

He can see from her expression that she knows those last words were a struggle. She doesn’t say anything about it, though, which is the greatest kindness she can do him in that moment. “Then I will help you.” She speaks over her shoulder to Oorja for a bit, but her eyes stay fixed on him. Oorja puts away her knife, but regards him with open suspicion. And yeah, he might deserve that. On both counts.

Prisha turns all her attention to him. “May I see your Geralt? Healing is not my expertise, but I have served as a medic often, in my time.”

He gives a tight nod, voiceless again, and steps back into the same horror scene he’d abandoned ten minutes ago. It feels like hours have passed. The smell is debilitating, and the visual isn’t much better. Geralt lays limp and shivering in a puddle of his own pus and bile, a pile of washed-out limbs worn pink at the edges where the cruel ropes bite. Eskel doesn’t quite swallow back his own little noise of hurt at the sight.

He moves past Prisha, who stands frozen—taking it all in, he supposes—and kneels beside Geralt. He pushes lank hair, more gray than white, back from a listless face. A gasp erupts from the vicinity of the door, and Geralt jerks then gasps, himself. Eskel doesn’t bother looking up, he’ll only end up glaring at Oorja and that’s not… It won’t help anything. So, he keeps petting Geralt, whispering a worthless old litany about steadiness, the closest thing a witcher has to a lullaby, or a prayer.

* * *

Ultimately, Prisha sends Eskel out because he’s being upset too loudly. He hasn’t actually said a word after he'd laid out the whole mess, from Lindenvale to the valley of dead horses, for Prisha's judgement. But she insists he’s projecting his distress at her, and no, she _isn’t_ reading his mind, he’s just not shielding. 

And, alright, maybe Eskel is a little upset. He’s no stranger to dissections. He's helmed a fair few, himself. Blood, guts, and pain are his daily companions. Watching Geralt, though, bound and spread out before a mage, waiting to be taken to pieces... That does something dark to his head. He hadn't known he had the magical wherewithal to project his emotional state, apparently loud enough to disturb a sorceress in close quarters. (Had Prisha known when he walked through her wards in Mulbrydale that he—oh, shit. _Yennefer._ Eskel had told Geralt that he didn’t fuck sorceresses, which is true. But he’s definitely thought about it.)

Oorja, bless her, seems to have come around after whatever explanation Prisha gave her, and distracts him into a dagger throwing competition. He’s relieved to see the massive fighting knife doesn’t make a reappearance. Instead, she uses a pair of small, skeletal looking daggers that fly like a dream, straight and true. He wishes they didn’t need a translator, because he needs to know where she got them.

She’s good, too. Maybe better than Eskel. They take turns pointing out difficult targets to bullseye. He gestures to a small blue spiral, painted onto the lintel of a hut some twenty paces away. She nods; he throws. His boot knife thunks home, a little to the left of the mark, and he swears. Oorja smirks and nails it without fanfare. 

“Yeah, yeah. That one’s yours.”

She smirks some more and starts looking for another target.

It takes forever and no time at all before Prisha steps out to find Eskel and Oorja having a heated, gesture-based disagreement over who was closest to their latest mark. “I am glad to see you getting along,” she remarks, voice warm and dry and very tired. “But why is it that when you two are left alone, weapons become involved?”

“I have that effect on people,” Eskel tells her, low and easy, like he’s not ready to bolt through the door she just came out of. Being able to hear Geralt’s heartbeat is the only thing keeping him in place.

Prisha, powerful and beautiful and merciful, steps out of the doorway and beckons him inside. He doesn’t need to be told twice and darts in, witcher fast. Prisha handles it better than most, she only flinches a little, but Eskel needs to stop doing that before he wins himself a stoning.

Geralt lies limp and unbound, nude but for his knickers and the mass of bandages wound around his torso. “I have induced a temporary sleep,” Prisha explains. “It will fade in an hour.” He turns to thank her, and finds her frowning at him. “I am to understand conventional sleeping drafts and anesthetics do not work on witchers, yes?”

He turns all the way around, sensing this is not a conversation to have over his shoulder. “Yeah. Between our tolerances and altered chemistry, it takes dedication to get drunk, forget anything else.”

“But you are skilled alchemists, also, correct?”

Eskel narrows his eyes. Is she angling for formulae? He can't see what good they would do her. Sure, most medicines are poisons, but there are limits. Witcher medicines are just human death sentences. Probably not great for mages, either. “In a way. But not like that. We have…potions to increase blood production or improve healing factors, but, uh, human potions don’t work on witchers and vice versa.”

She shakes her head. “You misunderstand. Why did _you_ not administer an anesthetic? Hearing your Geralt scream is what brought my Oorja running.”

Eskel frowns. “What would I have given him? I mean...I have alcohol but I didn’t want to risk him throwing it up with his ribs. And I didn’t want to hit him again—knocking a witcher out like that doesn’t last long, anyway.”

“Why not a potion?” She’s staring at him like one of them is an idiot but she’s less sure by the second which one of them it is.

“What potion?” Eskel is starting to lose his patience. What the hell are they even talking about? “I told you. We have potions for recovery, but why would we have one that makes us helpless?”

“Helpless,” Prisha mouths more than speaks. She narrows her eyes. “You…have no witcher formulations to manage pain? Nothing to help you rest?” She sounds—not quite angry, but like she could be, given another push. He has no idea what pushed her this far, so he can't even try to avoid it. She gestures at Geralt. “These scars. The injuries they represent. They must have taken _time_ to heal.”

“Well...yeah.” She looks incredulous, lips flat and tight in an unhappy line. “We—we have pretty high pain tolerances,” Eskel tries to explain, but that doesn't seem to help. “We’re not prone to shock so—" She holds up her hand to stop him, like she can’t bear to hear anymore, and he _still_ doesn’t know what’s wrong.

“I think,” she says slowly, stricken, “this is a discussion for another time. Let us return to the issue at hand.” She looks between him and Geralt like she’s trying to understand the unfathomable. “If he cannot be drugged into cooperation, how will you keep him from harming himself while he is...” she pauses to search for words. “While he is still influenced by the curse?”

He hesitates before answering, since he’s pretty sure it's only going to make her angry again, but there’s no point in lying either. “I’ll put the ropes back on him. Now that you knocked him out, I’ll have time to do a more thorough job. I can’t prevent him from struggling, but I can make sure he doesn’t have enough leverage to do anything too damaging.” 

Yep. Her lips are pressed flat again. There’s nothing for it, though, so she concedes to his expertise on the matter and takes her leave of him, Oorja in tow, with a promise to return in the morning.

He sets to work, tying careful knot after careful knot.

Eskel’d tried to talk about payment before they left, but Prisha had demurred. This, in Eskel’s long experience, is never good.

He runs his fingers beneath the rope, checking the tension as Geralt sleeps peacefully on.

It means she’s going to hang a favor over him. There’s nothing he can do about it, though. Prisha doesn’t strike him as stupid, she knows what she did for him today. She read his fucking mind. She knows that Eskel will pay whatever price she asks for Geralt’s life.

He pats the last knot and sits back. 

Geralt’s life.

Finally, he lets himself bring shaking hands to his face and allows the pent-up, now unnecessary grief to leave him in torrents. Geralt is still alive. The relief of it might actually kill him. He sucks in a heaving breath. Eskel still has Geralt. They're still bound. In stone. In gold. Sealed with laughter, rolling around in the last leaves of a Blue Mountain autumn.

It’s not over, he knows. Geralt is still injured, still cursed, but Eskel can work with that. He’s a master witcher, for fuck’s sake! Curse breaking is his bread and butter. And if _he_ can’t handle it, he’s got sorceresses coming out of the woodwork. Hell, even the crown princess of Nilfgaard herself!

He’s pretty sure he didn’t cry this hard when he stood at the gates of Kaer Morhen the very first time. But that’s alright; Geralt is the only one around. And Geralt, if he were able, would only laugh at him a little before tipping him over, so he could hide his face in his lap.

By the time Eskel is recovered, Geralt has shaken off the last of his magical sleep. His head is turned, watching Eskel intently, though with no recognition. He hates that look. Seeing it again makes him obscurely angry with Triss Merigold. 

“So what do we do now?” Eskel asks the empty air and his silent companion.

Geralt huffs in suspicion, which becomes a moan when he moves something he shouldn’t. Eskel’s across the hut in record time. “If you undo all Prisha’s good work, I swear on my steel sword, I will feed everything you own to the next goat I find.” He checks over the bandages, but nothing’s pulled awry. He glowers at Geralt anyway, who doesn’t seem the least bit cowed, which is normal, but not at all amused at Eskel’s expense, which he can’t believe he misses.

With a huff of his own, he leans back against a wall and tries to work out the thorny problem of Geralt’s curse and what it means in the wider context of what he’s come to call the “Siege of Velen.” For a trackless mound of mud and death, Velen has more than its fair share of natural guardians. Between the godling referenced in Geralt’s notes, on top of the three nonhuman sisters, and Morana, it must be a tight squeeze.

It’s not unheard of for a pissed off guardian to imbue a single champion with magic and purpose, use them as both defender and enforcer. Had Morana taken Geralt as her champion? A witcher would be a formidable ally. She hadn’t seemed like she needed one though, considering the show of force he’d witnessed in Lindenvale. And… he stares at Geralt, who is back to testing his bindings. Something niggles at him. He sits and watches Geralt get more and more frustrated, waiting patiently for his mind to supply whatever detail it's chewing on.

It takes a few long moments but sure enough—”The alderman said she’d already been there.” He’d called her… “Black Beauty.” Geralt snarls, low and hateful and _sustained_. Eskel is taken aback. In a hundred years, he’s never heard Geralt do that. Hell, he hadn’t known it was possible for human vocal cords, even mutated ones, to make such a sound.

He isn’t pulling on the ropes anymore, gaze focussed on Eskel. “Morana.” The snarl drops an octave; it’s a nasty noise, a ‘last thing you’ll ever hear’ sort of noise. “Lambert.” The sound recedes. Huh. “You’re listening to me,” Eskel realizes. But Geralt quickly puts lie to that, and resumes straining against the ropes in abject disinterest before Eskel finishes speaking. “Okay. Well, fuck you too.” He gets up to check on Scorpion, who is no doubt fine.

Scorpion is so fine as to be borderline delirious, between a sheltered place to rest and getting a thorough rub down from Eskel. He’s glad somebody is having a good time. “I think,” he confides in a soft ear, “that she didn’t mean to make him her champion. He’s a foreigner _and_ a witcher; even if he weren’t resistant to magic, he’s got no tie to her lands. It’s got to be all but impossible for her to control him. But she has him, now, and she doesn’t know what to do with him. So she left him to run amok.” Scorpion snorts in tentative agreement. “She can’t control him, but she can apply enough pressure to keep him—’ here he flounders for a word. He settles for a helpless gesture to the hut containing Geralt after far too long in thought.

It all sounds like a personal grudge. But Geralt’s journal states that he’d freed her—a favor, not an insult. Then again, the magic in the village felt suffocating and dirty. Like it had passed through screaming madness and come out the other side as a calmer, deeper, and more dangerous kind of insanity. No real point in looking for reasonable motives.

It’s the rhythmic splitting and gathering of Scorpion’s tail beneath his fingers that gives him the framework for the scattered pieces of the problem. As he twists and tucks each section of braid, he notices that he dropped a strand further up and the whole thing is lopsided, now.

Land guardians have a rhythm, too. Sow, ripen, reap, rest. A seasonal cycle, with much more dire consequences for a dropped strand. It’s hardly a week past midsummer; Morana _ought_ to be a fresh-faced summer bride. “But instead, she killed her husband,” he tells Scorpion’s rump, bringing to mind the faces of four bereaved women. Four wives—mothers of three daughters—that Prisha suggested had widowed themselves. “She killed him four times, in Mulbrydale. She’s reaping.” Eskel frowns. There weren’t dates on the contracts he picked up in Holloway, but, for news of trouble in Velen to have reached him in Lormark, Morana must have been in her destructive phase since the thaw. “She’s stuck.”

He tucks Scorpion’s tail under itself, then pats him on the haunch. “The cycle has to be reset.” Eskel’s never done such a thing, but he remembers reading a writeup in one of old Master Rennes’ journals about something similar. A lutin out of sync with the winery he guarded. The resolution wasn’t difficult in itself, but complicated. The difference in scale complicates things further. Morana, whatever she is (Eskel is starting to think she’s not too far off demigod), eats manic lutins for breakfast and shits out godlings.

A harvesting guardian who ought to be ripening… “She’s supposed to be a bride. It’s gonna have to be a wedding,” Eskel says, slow and stupid with the realization. At its most simplistic, the wedding rite is sex. Sex with Morana. Sex with her mad champion. Sex with an injured and out-of-his-mind Geralt.

He wonders if Prisha can feel his distress, now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is where the fic earns its dubcon/noncon warning. Take care of yourselves, okay?

It’s the morning after the night before and, Kreve almighty, Eskel _feels_ it. Like he’s coming off a Toussaint bender instead of hours of restful meditation. He slides his eyes over to where Geralt is fitfully sleeping. Bruised eyelids and thin fingers flicker, and a muscle in those pale, hollow cheeks jumps. He puts Eskel in mind of the big, white hounds the lords and ladies of Dol Blathana let lounge by their hearths—all shaggy fluff and long lines, indolent and a little weird looking, but pretty despite it. The elves treat their giant wolfhounds like foot rests and seat warmers. The dogs are content to let them. There is something very Geralt in that relationship. Geralt huffs and wrinkles his nose and the image sweetens.

Eskel’s overcome with the desire to kiss _this_ weird looking wolfhound awake, regardless of his own aching head. An inconvenient want, but not surprising. How many mornings have they had like this one? Eskel feeling sore and shitty, watching Geralt sleep, dumbfounded by his own incredible luck. It’s so close to being right.

It’s not the ropes wound around Geralt that throw off the fantasy, nor the bandages and scent of blood. Not the rough floor of an abandoned hut beneath their cheeks, either. (Sure, they’re venerable, century old witchers _now_ , but their wild days aren’t so far behind either of them.) The growl tumbling out of Geralt’s chest is what’s spoiling the effect; the same one Eskel’d heard the night before. It’s not a human noise. It’s not a witcher noise. It’s pure animal, and it curdles the desire in Eskel’s stomach.

He lets his eyes linger on Geralt—but there’s distinctly less pleasure in it now—and sets his mind on the task at hand, his solution to this whole sordid mess.

Pushing Morana back into a natural rhythm seems like it’ll yield the best results, regardless of his personal feelings. Killing her will only end in a power vacuum, and, at the rate Velen is going, the chances of a benevolent guardian taking over are laughable. 

Provided that Eskel could kill her in the first place. Geralt left her alone for as long as he did for a reason. Even if Eskel doesn’t know for sure what that reason is, he’s inclined to trust his brother’s judgement. Best all around to bring Morana back in line with the wheel of seasons. But that’s no small task.

Things like this rely heavily on sympathetic magic—’as above, so below’ type stuff. Eskel is already at an extreme disadvantage. Midsummer has passed and taken a massive amount of temporal resonance with it. Temporal resonance isn’t the be-all-end-all of sympathetic magic. But it _is_ the cudgel Eskel likes to batter all the non-sympathetic bits into submission with.

Geralt has to play the bride in this wedding. He has to _be_ Morana in a metaphorical sense. And lest Eskel forget ‘all the non-sympathetic bits,’ Geralt is not from Velen. Blue Mountain snows and lethal mutagens run in his veins, not swamp water and coastal breezes. He’s not _Morana’s_ on a fundamental level. It’s part of the reason she can’t control him. But what benefits in one context, hurts in another, and that lack of connection is one more on an extensive list. Morana is a woman, a mother, a wife. Geralt is a man, a father, a—Eskel’s never applied that word. Witchers don’t use it for each other, but the comparison is apt enough.

Complementary is better than opposing, but it’s still far from ideal. Morana and Geralt need to be synchronous. Unfortunately for Eskel, sympathetic magic is thin on the ground. But that’s fine. When was the last time he did a job under ideal conditions, anyway? He’s made do with worse. Not a lot worse, but he’s made do.

With a grunt, Eskel levers himself up and presses his lips to Geralt’s forehead before he can stop himself. It earns him a hiss and a snap of monstrous, mismatched teeth. 

Oh.

Roach’s bite wounds superimpose themselves in front of the jaws gnashing up at him from the floor. Geralt’s teeth, like Eskel’s, are an incoherent jumble, misaligned in a jaw the wrong shape to accommodate them. Not a new species of necrophage, then. Poor Roach. Poor Geralt. He won’t take it well when he remembers.

And he’ll never remember if Eskel doesn’t get going. He drags himself the rest of the way to his feet with a groan. He’s got sorceresses to entertain, information to ferret out, and a wedding to plan. Busy day.

So, while he waits for Prisha and Oorja to make an appearance, he ransacks every building in Downwarren. The hope is to find something useful. A journal detailing someone’s wedding day. Or a hope chest containing a bridal costume.

The village is in strangely good shape, in that regard. The cabinets all closed, chests are shut tight, trinkets and bottles lay undisturbed on their shelves. The locals must avoid the whole settlement, then. Maybe word of Morana’s slaughter got out. Fine by Eskel. Increases the chance that there might be some marriage-related detritus around.

Over the course of a century, Eskel’s been to a few weddings. Once, he was even invited. But he’s never seen a Temerian wedding. For all he knows, they’re exactly like Cintran weddings—a few promises and a binding of hands. Or more like a rowdy Kaedweni ceremony (probably not, which is a shame). The bones are the same, it’s the bits and bows that are different.

As far as rituals go, marriage is one of the oldest. Older than ruined elven cities and the crushing tide of humanity. Ancient as birth rites and funerals. Ancient as loneliness. There are dozens of names for it: handfasting, jumping the broom, plighting a troth, joining. Dozens of myriad customs and traditions. A thousand thousand little ways two people are brought together, not for property or politics or legacy, but for themselves. Because together is better than alone. Eskel himself was brought together with Geralt in such a little way, some six decades ago.

There is power to be found in the little details and old ways, and Eskel means to make good use of each and every one of them.

The trick is to figure out _which_ details—how do the locals dress it up? What sort of ceremony will Morana expect. (Witchers, as a rule, don’t go in for things like rings, or costumes, or alerting anyone not the two parties directly involved. There’s not a lot that’s great about being a witcher, but the absence of elaborate rituals is up there.) And it will be a trick, since his search of Downwarren has turned up nothing but rotted linens and rancid wine. The odds of Prisha and Oorja, lately of Ofir, knowing the local marriage customs aren’t high, either.

Meaning that Eskel has some talking to do. Not, ordinarily, a problem. But then he doesn’t, ordinarily, have a violent and insane Geralt to contend with. Hauling him around while Eskel tries to sweet talk a village already unhappy to see him isn’t going to work. Geralt’s injuries won’t improve with a day in the saddle. And Eskel does not want to think about the reaction of folks if Geralt snaps his teeth at a curious child. Worse still if Eskel stashes him outside a village and some well-meaning idiot frees him.

No. He’s not about to bring someone so dangerous near a human settlement. It grates against the entire purpose of his existence. But leaving a frothing Geralt bound and alone in Downwarren doesn’t fill him with confidence either. Eskel spent several hours yesterday watching Geralt work on his ropes. He didn’t manage to budge them, but that doesn’t mean he won’t. If he gets a hand free enough to direct an _igni_ somewhere useful...or, less likely, but still possible, if another hypothetical well-meaning idiot turns up. Either way, Eskel will be too far away to do anything about it. He won’t even know about it for hours.

And forget the damage Geralt might do, to himself or Velen at large; Eskel can’t waste time hunting him down again. The ritual to push Morana back into the seasonal rhythm has to be tonight. The longer he waits, the less magical leverage he has.

What he needs—damn, damn, damn, _damn_ —is another favor from Prisha. She’s more than capable of managing any escape attempt Geralt might make. Hell, she can put him to sleep and keep him that way with a wave of her hand. Eskel does not want to ask for another favor, though. Accumulating debts to mages is a good way to get yourself killed. They always want the most dangerous things: political assassinations, or a dragon slain, or a pet fucking witcher. But he’s out of time and out of options.

In for a penny, in for a crown.

So decided, he makes breakfast and settles in to wait. With any luck, he’ll find his right words before Prisha arrives, this time, and save himself some embarrassment.

* * *

Prisha is very accommodating when Eskel asks her to guard Geralt. Why shouldn’t she be? Eskel knows at least five people off the top of his head who would trip all over themselves to get him in their debt. And here he is, giving away the store. Vesemir would have a fit.

Prisha, for her part, produces a book from thin air and settles herself on a rough bench with enough grace and aplomb that Eskel has to blink to make sure she didn’t change it into a throne while she was at it. She mistakes his hesitation as concern (it’s really, _really_ not) and waves him off. “Go and make your investigation. I can study here as well as anywhere.” She tilts her chin toward a blissfully unconscious Geralt. “He won’t give me any trouble.” This is the plain and obvious truth, so Eskel nods his thanks and allows himself to be shooed away.

His first stop, Benek, is a mess from the word go. It turns out, people react poorly to a witcher asking after wedding customs. It didn’t end as badly as it might have—they’re still willing to hire him to resolve their contract, but that’s about the limit of their cooperation. Eskel manages to get a few details out of an excitable young woman before her sisters pull her away, though. It sounds like a kidnapping tradition. (Like a Skelliger wedding. Though, with their penchant for piracy, it’s not always a _ritual_ abduction. Eskel’d had to step in on one such occasion, but it sure was a hell of a party. Or clan war. It can be so hard to tell in Skellige.)

Sensing his welcome wearing thin, he mounts Scorpion. He’s not about to risk the contract on a slim chance for more information. Better to cut his losses and try his luck in Lurtch. It’s not too far, but far enough for Eskel to formulate a new strategy for data collection.

Lurtch is a settlement like any other he ends up in, proud and poor and in trouble. The bad water in their well is not a disaster, yet, but when the weather turns and makes traveling to more distant rivers and streams dangerous, the folk’ll have to abandon it.

Eskel tracks down the alderman, and introduces himself. The alderman, Berl, is taciturn and all business. He launches into negotiation before Eskel can get more than his guild name out. He's ruthless, too. The amount Eskel ends up agreeing to is criminal, but it's easy to see Lurtch can't spare another crown. 

After a beat of silence, Eskel figures out he's going to have to lead the conversation. “I know what’s poisoning your well.” Berl straightens up from his slouch against a post and waits for Eskel to continue. “It’s a curse. I can break it, but I need information and an object I don’t normally keep in my kit.”

Berl nods seriously. “Speak, Master Witcher. What I know, I'll tell ya. What you need, if we have it to spare, is yers.” Eskel savors this last moment of professional respect and dignity.

“I need a woman’s wedding costume.” And there it goes. Berl attempts to express four emotions at once, which is a sight. If this whole stupid thing weren’t so destructive, it would be a fucking farce fit for Dandelion to sing. “Just a piece of it, if that’s all you have. A garter.” Eskel makes his most solemn ‘witchers have no emotions, and we definitely don't have a sense of humor’ face. It doesn’t appear to be working, so he lets a little of his own suffering leak into the expression.

At this, Berl softens and sighs. “I’ll, ah… I’ll talk to Elke. I saved her mother’s things so’s she could have—” he stops. Eskel doesn’t press. He doesn’t need to hear the words to make four out of two and two: a widower who can hardly afford a witcher’s fee to keep his daughter safe and fed can’t spare coin for something as frivolous as a new bridal costume.

“Thank you,” is all he says.

He spends the next several minutes trying to look—not harmless, there is no chance of that, but he does try to look not-actively-dangerous. His scars put him at a pretty steep disadvantage, though. The townsfolk continue affording him a wide berth despite his efforts, so he figures he still hasn’t worked out the trick of it, even thirty years later.

Finally, the alderman returns. He offers Eskel a length of lace attached to a comb. “My Trudy’s veil.”

Eskel takes it with careful hands. “I can’t promise it’ll—”

The alderman waves him off. “After whatever you’re going to put it through, don’t reckon we want it back, anyhow. My Elke is apprenticed to the lacemaker. She said she would make her own when the day comes.”

Eskel nods, eyes drifting to where he suspects the new moon sits, veiled herself, on the barest edge of the horizon. The sensation of passing time is new and unpleasant. He tugs his journal from where he’d tucked it in his belt, shoving the comb in its place. “Now about that information…”

Berl is forthcoming after his initial desire to ask ‘why’ is put to bed by the overwhelming wisdom of ‘ignorance is bliss.’ Smart man. He tells Eskel about the vows and the gifts and doesn’t make any consummation jokes. Eskel assures Berl that his well ought to clear within a few days and he’ll be back to collect in that time, then heads for Scorpion, folding the veil to tuck into a saddlebag. His rough hands catch on the delicate lace, and he patiently pulls it free from snag after snag. He can’t spare time to track down another. He points Scorpion south and, with nothing else to do, worries.

Prisha hears him ride up and greets him in the square. “Were you successful?”

“Yeah. Took longer than I thought. Sorry.” Eskel makes an apologetic face as he dismounts, but turns immediately to free Scorpion of his tacking. “Any trouble?”

“Of course not.” Prisha sounds a little insulted, which is fair.

“Didn’t think there would be, but I had to ask.” His hands and eyes are still fixed on Scorpion.

“This again.” Prisha scoffs behind him. “Avoidance does not suit you. Ask whatever it is.”

Eskel winces. Busted. “Did you read Geralt?” he asks, turning to face her. “His mind, I mean. Can you?”

Prisha frowns at him. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes at himself. “Not…” he blows out a frustrated breath. “I mean, are you able? Is Geralt in there? When I break the curse, will he—did she break him?”

“I did not try. I do not want to.” She sighs. “You have not told me how he came to be cursed.”

“Because I don’t know.”

“I do not mean to blame you for that," she corrects. Eskel must've sounded more defensive than he meant to. "But, that means that we do not know if the curse will spread if I intrude on his mind.” Prisha levels a solemn look at Eskel. “A mad witcher is dangerous enough. We should not risk a mad sorceress as well.”

“You’re right.” And she is, even if it makes him more worried. “Thank you. For today. And yesterday.” He hesitates, reluctant to bring it up again, but it’s a witcher’s nature to have price negotiations right out front. 

Prisha hums. “You are thinking of payment, yes?” Eskel nods. “Perhaps I shall take it in trade.”

Eskel wheezes and she looks at him sharply. “That doesn’t—I don’t think that’s what you mean.”

Prisha stares at him hard for a beat. “Really? There are so many ways to ask someone to bed in this language,” she marvels, mostly to herself. “It’s a wonder you Nordlings get anything done.” 

“We don’t,” Eskel admits with a wry twist of his lips. “Look at the state of us.” He gestures broadly to encompass the North at large and Velen, specifically.

Prisha generously does not agree, but her mouth does quirk. “Lesson learned: simple language is safest. Very well. I have no need of money, but an exchange of favors—some might even call a _trade_ —is very valuable. I am sure I will have work for one such as yourself in the future.”

An unspecified favor. He’d known that would be her price. He’d known it yesterday. He doesn’t like it any more now than he had then.

He _likes_ Prisha, or he wants to like her—he thinks he could. But the favor she asks of him is a surefire way to make sure he never does. “Don’t ask me to kill someone.” Her brow furrows and her mouth drops open. “A life for a life, I know, but—”

She holds up her hand. “As you wish, Master Eskel. I will not use you as a weapon.”

He draws a breath to respond. “Don’t thank me. Please,” Prisha interrupts. She looks upset, again; like when they were talking about potions last night. Eskel’s not very experienced in overtures of friendship, but he’s pretty sure upsetting them by accident daily is not a winning formula.

“Okay. Uh,” Eskel stammers like an idiot. “I have to get ready for the ritual. You, um, you don’t have to—I mean, I got it handled so—”

Prisha looks less upset now, so at least he has that going for him. “Alright. As long as you have it _handled_.” She starts to turn away then spins back. “You should bring him to Mulbrydale after you break the curse. I would like to meet him properly.” With that, she rips a hole in reality and steps through.

“Sure,” Eskel tells the empty square. “You got it.” His voice bounces in disquieting echoes around the village. He finishes untacking Scorpion and, after another moment, goes to retrieve Geralt and begin his preparations.

* * *

By the time Eskel finishes clearing out the horse corpses in the pretty little valley outside Downwarren, the toll of the last few days has come for him with a vengeance. Everything hurts—his head, his back, his fucking teeth. He is overwhelmingly aware that he hasn’t slept. In fact, he’s barely eaten. Between grief and worry, he hasn’t had much of an appetite, and he’s paying for it now. Geralt is lucky he gives head like a dream. For anyone else, Eskel’d have cut his losses last week. Fuck. Eskel is so, so tired, and he still has a ritual to prepare for.

He’s tempted to take a dose of Petri’s, to spare his magical reserves from the barrage of _axii_ required to keep Geralt docile. But it’s too damn toxic, and he can’t risk impotence right now. He’s not going to get a better chance than tonight’s new moon. The timing is only going to get worse as the summer dies away. It has to be tonight. It has to be without any alchemical assistance, no matter how exhausted he is. Better a lackluster performance than no performance at all.

So he layers sign on top of sign, Geralt’s mad expression slackening into something empty but equally painful to see. Once he’s sure Geralt is well under his control, he removes the ropes one by one, moving too thin, too pliant limbs how he likes.

Eskel ties him ankle to thigh. The way a smiling Gheso courtesan had taught him, decades ago. He hates using these knots like this. They were never _meant_ to be used like this: with coarse hemp rope and a man all but out of his mind. But he needs access to Geralt, has to prepare him for the ritual consummation—there won’t be time to ease the way once Morana gets involved—and he can’t trust him enough to leave his legs free. Eskel’s stomach roils despite being empty and he wants to laugh at himself. It’s only going to get worse from here.

He flips Geralt over, careful of his ribs. He’s not struggling yet, for which Eskel is grateful, but he knows damn well that it won’t last. He grabs the salve he left in the grass at Geralt’s hip and braces himself. Geralt has a _fit_ the second Eskel’s finger introduces itself, and Eskel is so lost in his own misery that Geralt nearly breaks his nose. Eskel almost wants to let him. Instead, he uses his bigger body to force Geralt down into the grass, and his own broad fingers violate the most precious thing Eskel has ever had.

He makes it as quick and efficient as possible, to limit the trauma to himself as much as Geralt. Once he’s sure he won’t hurt Geralt later, he double-checks the knots and goes to dig a hole to vomit in.

Wiping bile from his mouth and kicking dirt over the mess, Eskel runs through his plans. He needs wards that can stop a charging horse. No small feat. But first things first, he needs to ensure privacy for as long as possible. He digs out a small mirror and a shot glass from his packs, along with his waterskin and a measure of salt. With ease of practice, he mixes up saltwater in the glass and sets the mirror over its mouth, then inverts the whole thing. He places it in the center of where he plans to work with a few soft words. It’s an old witcher’s ward, simple and effective. He’s sure Prisha could do better, but he’s not about to have an audience for this.

He places a heel of bread and a half full bottle of rancid wine beside the mirror. (He couldn’t afford the extortionate prices that weasel of a traveling merchant charged for a bottle of something drinkable. They’ll have to make do with what Eskel scavenged from the corpse of Downwarren.) Next, he begins to carve intricate lines into the dirt and grass with his trophy knife. This particular ward is time intensive and highly specialized. It’s an inert, modified form of _yrden_ designed as a trap of attrition. A pretty piece of spellwork, if he does say so himself.

His brothers had been impressed, even if they could never use it themselves. Lambert doesn’t have the finesse and Geralt lacks the raw ability. They’d been happy to test it for him, though, trying to throw everything from snowballs to Ciri into the center. Vesemir had put a stop to that, but only after she puked on Coën from the disorientation.

He draws the last line and sets the trigger. Taking one last look around, he walks over to his packs and strips off all his clothes. He folds them into the bags and then hides them up a nearby tree. Eskel knows he’s being ridiculous. He doesn’t have to be naked for this, but…it feels bad, the idea of being clothed while Geralt is bare and helpless, empty eyed and out of his mind.

It’s stupid, the way he insists on tying himself in knots before getting to work. Geralt has often chided him for it. This is the best way. This is what has to happen. He knows that Geralt, in his right mind, would submit without hesitation to whatever was necessary to break the curse. And if it involves being trussed and naked in a valley that reeks of rotten meat and smoke, at least it’s Eskel. After all these years, he _knows_ Geralt. This is what Geralt wants. What Eskel wants is irrelevant.

With a sigh and a shake of his shoulders, he returns to Geralt and picks up the veil he set aside. It’s a little dirty, but that doesn’t matter. Geralt has subsided back into the hold of the _axii_ now, and watches his approach with blank eyes. “Hey, Wolf,” he murmurs, kneeling and pulling Geralt upright. “You know, when humans talk about renewing their vows, I sure hope it ain’t like this.” It could be worse. _Lambert_ could have gone and gotten himself cursed by an insane nature spirit, which would be worse for a number of reasons, one of which is not having enough hair to shove the comb of the veil through. Silver lining.

Eskel runs his fingers through Geralt’s hair, stroking for a moment, then follows up with the comb and arranges the sheer fabric and lace. It falls over his face, and Eskel swallows hard. It obscures Geralt’s facial scars and softens his features. He looks young. Maybe even as young as they were, sixty years ago. He swallows again and pushes the curtain of lace off Geralt’s forehead. Geralt lets him, insensate without a reason to fight.

“Always thought it was stupid,” Eskel tells him, voice rough. “Wearin’ ‘em like that. How’re you supposed to kiss and drink? The wreaths they do up north are better.” Eskel takes a slow breath. He’s stalling and he knows it. All that’s left is to begin.

With one last steadying breath, Eskel reaches out and lifts the glass, spilling saltwater across the mirror and the thirsty earth. Violet power flares in a ring around them, spreading inward in crazed lines. Morana will find them soon, but it’s already too late. The trap will keep her out long enough to complete the ritual. Depending on how much power she brings to bear on it and how much injury she’s willing to risk, it might be close. No sense worrying about it now, though.

He turns his attention to the man in his arms. Geralt is still limp and pliant, staring at the vibrant lines of magic with the rapt fascination of a child. That thought turns Eskel’s stomach, but he ignores it and leans up so he looms over Geralt. He wraps gentle fingers around Geralt’s jaw and intones, “I have stolen thee away from thy father and brothers.” He lets the words rumble in his chest before spilling past his lips, they pick up resonance and echo in ways they shouldn’t in a lushly overgrown valley. “Let your mother moan and your sisters rend their clothing. For I will have you for mine own bride.”

He stretches and grabs the bread from beside the mirror. It’s a little soggy from the saltwater, but, Eskel had been careful to remove all the moldy bits earlier. Only the best for his wife. He presses the softest morsel to Geralt’s mouth. “Let she who would be my wife accept from my hands the goodness of earth and grain.” The words drop like stones in still water. Geralt shivers—whether from the building, latent magic or a stray breeze is impossible to say—and tries to turn away from the offering.

The ground starts trembling beneath Eskel’s knees in the rhythm of a gallop. Seems the guest of honor is about to arrive. He stays focussed on stroking Geralt’s throat and jaw, making yummy noises and tugging on the fading strings of _axii_ even as a black horse appears in his periphery. Luckily, Geralt’s already swallowed by the time Morana careens into the perimeter. The magical force of the collision lands across Eskel’s shoulders noiselessly, but it rattles the breath in his lungs. The impact is enough to rouse Geralt and snap the last _axii_ tether.

Eskel tilts his head to avoid getting a snarl full of unnaturally sharp teeth lodged in his good cheek. Geralt lunges and rolls his eyes wildly, trying and failing to prioritize one threat over the other. He can hear Geralt’s patient voice teaching Ciri melee tactics in the frigid courtyard of Kaer Morhen. _She who hesitates is lost, princess. If you don’t choose a target, they’ll all target you._ He remembers the way Geralt’s eyes sparkled with the joy of imparting lessons, and he remembers his own small pang of grief, that Kaer Morhen would never need a fencing instructor again.

Here and now, Geralt struggles against ropes and Eskel’s arms, snarling and spitting like a cornered beast. Two yards away, another cornered beast tries Eskel’s trap again and again, each attempt releasing a shockwave of bruising force. Eskel’s medallion pulses in time. He reaches for the wine bottle.

Hooves beat fretfully about them, but the line holds. Geralt is shaking off his stupor with every impact. Morana must be relaxing her grip on him to attack the ward. In an unasked for gift, Geralt is starting to look coherent. His face creases with confusion, but his amber eyes focus on Eskel’s face. “‘Skel?” he croaks, though it’s lost beneath the shrieks and braying of a mad demigoddess not ten feet away.

Like the witcher he is, Eskel seizes his chance with both hands and _runs._ He says nothing to Geralt, he just fills his mouth with rancid wine and presses his lips to Geralt’s, forcing the vinegary swill into a pliant mouth.

Geralt—wounded and in pain, confused, naked, bound in rope and magic, surrounded by the screams of a demonic horse, with a mouthful of what Eskel knows tastes like poison—swallows without hesitation. Good old Geralt, always up for the weird shit. Eskel wants to laugh and kiss him in earnest.

Instead, he whispers, “Let she who would be my wife accept from my lips the sweetness of sun and vine,” into Geralt’s mouth.

Morana immediately stops screaming, which is a relief. Then the ominous whispers start, and that’s still better than the screams but by a much slimmer margin. “Bridegroom?” The word slithers from several directions, each with its own emphasis and timing. It’s far more sinister than the word has any right to sound.

He shakes it off and turns his attention back to Geralt who is nigh insensate again. She’s probably given up on the perimeter, then. Good. Means she’s getting ready to take control of Geralt. “With these gifts, I thee tribute,” he says, voice slicing through the whispers like one of Oorja’s knives.

“We are widowed! Jarilo’s bones are our home!” she-it-they? hiss, buffeting Eskel and raising gooseflesh on his arms and thighs.

“With my body, I thee honor,” he declares through the taste of vinegar trying to choke him.

“Our Jarilo!”

“No!”

“He’s dead!”

“He lives!”

“Jarilo!”

“My love!”

Eskel ignores the argument and finishes the vow. “With this troth, I thee wed.” The words ring like bells at midnight, intent bouncing and reverberating with the small, safe circle of magic.

Because he means it. He means every single word. It’s the only reason he believed this would work at all. Geralt is _Eskel’s_ , by right of nine decades of shared blood and love, by witcher’s rite of stone and gold, and now, by human rite of bread and wine. He is fiercely glad to have Geralt by whatever means present themselves, and he means to keep Geralt by the same ferocity.

The horse is stock still on the other side of the barrier. Most of the whispers have died away, though a few are still arguing. Geralt is looking at him, but the expression isn’t his own. “Jarilo,” s/he murmurs, eyes shy, not at all like his Geralt, who grins like an outrageous flirt and stares straight at Eskel when he wants...well, Eskel.

This is good, Eskel tells himself. This is Morana relinquishing her hold on one vessel to enter another. It’s ideal, even, since Eskel has never fucked a horse in his long life, and he is too old to start with that shit now. This is what he wanted, Eskel insists. This was the goal.

“Will you come to me?” Morana asks with Geralt’s mouth. Eskel wants to do anything but. “My Jarilo,” they sigh. “My love.”

Eskel’s not hard. Nor, for that matter, is Geralt, but that’s a less pressing problem. This is his only chance, so he drags up memory after memory of things that set his skin humming. The brush of wild magic against his nerves. Geralt’s ‘I dare you’ smile. The rush of demolishing a sparring partner. Clean linen sheets beneath his back in the early morning. The lumbar curve of a beautiful woman.

He fists himself and remembers he and Geralt as boys, shoving against each other recklessly, overeager with the sheer joy of the things their bodies could do together. Pressed close and pressing closer, hands over mouths, ‘quiet! Be quiet!’ and Geralt’s stupid smile, unchanged in eighty years.

It’s sweet. It’s good. It’s not enough.

He looks over at Geralt, bound and bare but for a bridal veil, and imagines a different wedding for them. One where Geralt is splayed out in a lush, golden field, smiling—always that fucking smile—as he sets his wedding wreath on Eskel’s brow. Eskel leans in to kiss that grin as the high sun warms his back and Geralt mutters cheerful filth into his mouth…

It works, but it _hurts._

He leans over Geralt/Morana and pushes their knee up and wide. “I will come to you,” he tells them, and hopes the prep he did what feels like hours ago is enough. It’s a struggle to slot their bodies together. Geralt isn’t looking at him and it’s all wrong.

The thing in Geralt’s body is still playing at virginal bride. “Will you take my maiden’s blood, Jarilo?”

Eskel stomps down his revulsion and shoves himself home, desperate not to lose his erection before breaking the curse. Geralt is tight, tight enough to be painful, but it seems like Eskel is the only one who cares. He hates it, hates this. So he thinks about the wheat field, drenched in sunlight, and he thrusts ungainly and arrhythmic. It’s not good.

In fact, it’s awful, and in the wheat field with _his_ Geralt, he’s already been pushed off. Geralt shoves Eskel over and straddles his hips, smiling smiling smiling. He takes what he wants as his due, with eighty years worth of confidence that Eskel will let him. And Eskel does. He always does. Geralt tosses his head like a show pony even though it’s Eskel getting ridden into the dirt. He presses his hands to Eskel’s chest, keeping him at bay no matter how he wants to kiss that smile off of Geralt’s mouth—

It’s better. It’s better now. Eskel is starting to feel the building tide of orgasm, when a minute ago it seemed impossible to stay hard. He can finish and he can finish _this_. Geralt hums deep in his throat and Eskel’s balls tighten—in this he is much like his brother. He wants to please. Even like this.

Here, in a dark valley set in the hellscape of Velen, buffeted by insane voices alternately encouraging and disparaging, he can’t resist laying a chaste kiss on Geralt’s chapped and bitten lips. The voice that isn’t Geralt speaks against his mouth. “Give me my last wedding gift, husband.”

Oh, it’s not Geralt, it’s _not_ , but in the sun bright field, it _is._ And there, beneath his Geralt, Eskel is helpless to do anything but exactly as bid. He surges against Geralt, whines into his throat, and comes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are very confused about the new structure, I apologize. It finally dawned on me what an insurmountable block of text a 10k word chapter was, so I went back and broke the original two Eskel chapters into four. Hopefully, it's a little less intimidating now.
> 
> The next and final chapter sees our boys safe and sane, and stupidly in love. So hang tight and don't worry. I promised a happy ending and I intend to deliver.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess what!?!?! There's art! The inimitable [Anna Blume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annablume/pseuds/annablume)|[Mondfuchs](https://mondfuchs.tumblr.com/) did this incredible rendition of a scene in chapter four--you know the one. [Gaze upon it and weep!](https://mondfuchs.tumblr.com/post/642703393817837568/a-little-fanart-for-kikomurda-s-jarilo-fic)
> 
> And, as always, huge shout out to [EskelChopChop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EskelChopChop), who is so very patient with my crimes against hyphens and the kindest cheerleader I could hope for.

Geralt hurts. Fucking everywhere. His every breath is pure, searing fire; his head is pounding; his skin feels rubbed raw. This is all to indicate that he is, much to his dismay, still alive, and so he continues his inventory.

He’s bound. In the grass. And naked. No, he isn’t. A piece of fabric flickers beside his face. He’s wearing a...veil? There’s someone pressed up behind him. His mouth tastes like rancid wine—which goes a long way to explaining things. Once he identifies the body behind him as Eskel (the combination of a witcher-slow heartbeat and a man larger than himself narrows the field pretty quick,) he lets himself relax.

Except, despite feeling like shit, Geralt doesn’t feel _hungover_. His ease vanishes. “Eskel?” he ventures. His voice comes out sounding like it was dragged behind a cart for several miles. Eskel makes a sound suspiciously like a sob and presses his face between Geralt’s shoulder blades for several moments.

Geralt doesn’t press, lets Eskel get himself under control, and takes a closer look at his surroundings instead. They’re in a grassy, flowering valley. There is a black horse nearby, snuffling about and pulling up weeds. There is no oppressive supernatural presence radiating from it. It smells female and its eyes are...normal horse eyes. Big and dark and non-magical. He spots a wine bottle and a mirror in the grass a little ways off. The veil slips into his vision again.

_Ah._

Curse breaking is a specialty for the School of the Wolf. Vesemir would be glad to know Geralt’s helping to keep his brother's hand in. By the looks of the props scattered around them, this one was...fun.

Good old Eskel (poor, old Eskel) always up for the weird shit. It must've been rough on him.

Behind him, Eskel seems to have settled down and started untying his hands. “I always wanted to be a summer bride,” Geralt tries.

“Hilarious,” Eskel grumps, but Geralt can feel him smiling against his shoulders. “Funniest thing I’ve heard in a fortnight.” Eskel starts chafing his newly free wrists, and Geralt hisses as the fuzzy not-hurt of returning circulation creeps down his forearms. He’s always hated the pins-and-needles sensation more than actual pain. He knows what to _do_ with pain—has had years of training and practice. Discomfort that has nothing to do with bleeding or burns or broken bones is...unsettling.

Eskel’s thumbs trigger wave after wave of buzzing nerves as he rubs life back into Geralt’s hands, and Geralt grits his teeth and lets him. It’s for his own good. It’ll pass faster if he lets Eskel help. “No, that’s a lie,” Eskel continues. “Funniest thing I heard was ‘bout a week ago in Oxenfurt. One of the townies told me their contracts were being handled by a balding Wolf Witcher.”

Geralt starts to laugh but makes a noise like a deflating bladder when it strains his ribs. “That’s hard to beat,” he gasps. Eskel hums and works at the knots on his legs. It’s quick work, and Geralt is _finally_ able to turn around—fuck, his _side_ —and get hands on Eskel, who looks like ten miles of bad road. He presses their foreheads together. “Alright?” he whispers into the space between them.

“You’re the one with a hole in his—”

“Eskel.”

“I—” Eskel closes his eyes. He’s trembling under Geralt’s fingers and Geralt knows exactly how pointing that out will go. Instead, he decides to complain about being cold. But in a minute. He brings his hands up to cradle Eskel’s face, drawing his thumbs over the bruised skin beneath still closed eyes. “...yeah,” Eskel finishes on a long breath, nodding a little. Like he’s not sure how badly he’s hurt, but he intends to be alright anyway. Stubborn.

Geralt lets his hands drift into greasy dark hair and pets for a few minutes. Eskel makes little hurt noises every so often, but Geralt knows better than to stop. Eventually, Eskel softens beneath his fingers and Geralt can bear to move. “There a blanket?” he asks, making a show of shivering as much as his ribs will allow. “‘M fucking freezing.”

“So demanding.” Eskel’s voice is unsteady and reluctant, but he untangles them and rises, reaching down to help Geralt to his own feet.

They stumble over to a tree, and Eskel tugs down a bundle from the branches. A blanket is settled on Geralt’s bare shoulders and Eskel reaches for his clothes. Geralt lets him get as far as his smalls. “No.” 

Eskel looks up, brows furrowed. Geralt can see him shaking from over there. 

“C’mere. You’re warmer.” 

Eskel rolls his eyes but comes without more prodding. They settle together beneath the tree, arms looped to avoid Geralt’s bandages. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Eskel sighs, voice stronger already. “Better.” 

They sit that way until first light, then make their way back to Downwarren to sleep off the night. It’s a slow journey but Eskel is patient as Geralt complains about his sore ribs and weakened limbs.

“Of course you’re weak. You looked better fed during that Wild Hunt shit!” Eskel huffs when he’s had enough.

Geralt takes a good look at his own body for the first time in the growing dawn light. Eskel is right. “Fuck me. What day is it?”

Eskel sighs. “‘Bout a week past the solstice—” Inconveniently, Geralt’s bad knee chooses that moment to go out (totally unrelated to the fact that he’s spent almost _seven weeks_ out of his mind and doing gods alone know what.) “Whoa, there. Take it easy. I just put you back together!” Lucky for the both of them, Eskel, at least, is fighting fit and has a solid hold on Geralt. He sweeps Geralt into his arms and hauls him the rest of the way.

Geralt is still wearing the veil, and it flutters cheerfully around them. He laughs, can’t help it, though it has less to do with the picture they make and more to do with being free and sane. “You gonna carry me over the threshold?”

Eskel laughs, too. It rumbles through Geralt, and he wants to roll around in the sound. “Yeah, actually. But Velen does that kidnapped bride thing, so you should probably pretend to struggle.”

Geralt hums and presses his face into Eskel’s neck, breathing in sweat and dirt and sex and _Eskel._ “Not today, honey. I have a headache.” Eskel laughs again and Geralt could almost melt in relief.

Eskel shoulders into a hut and nudges the door shut behind them. “Romance is dead,” he announces, trying for tragic, but the joy is too high in his voice. “Our wedding night is ruined!”

Eskel is still smiling, broad and delighted, when he settles Geralt on a bedroll, but the words settle in Geralt's chest with a strange weight.

_Huh_ . He stares at Eskel’s back when he turns away for something or other, thinking. _A wedding night._

* * *

Geralt rouses from an exhausted sleep with an armful of Eskel (wonderful. The best.) and a faceful of glaring noontime sunlight (awful. The worst.) He grunts and puffs up his chest against the bandages, frowning over their too-snug grip on his ribs.

Last night, Eskel had insisted they were _not_ too tight; Geralt was being an infant. Geralt generously countered that he _might_ be acting like a child, but they were still too tight. Yen insisted compromise was important for long-lasting relationships, and Geralt’s strategy of ‘why not both’ seemed to have done the trick for the last few decades.

Sadly, Eskel wasn’t interested in compromise right then, and told him to go to sleep before he caught an _axii_ to the temple.

His face dropped as soon as the words left his mouth and Geralt hurried to complain about something else to get that look off Eskel’s face. It didn’t work.

Still, Geralt relaxes as he remembers the exchange. It’s a relief to have a solid ‘then’ and ‘now.’ His sense of time has been in flux for so long that it’s impossible for him to work out an order of events for the last month and a half. Can’t even believe it’s been that long.

But one look down at his wasted body puts paid to that.

He disentangles himself before he starts fidgeting, and Eskel moans in protest, but otherwise doesn’t move or open his eyes. Geralt’s mouth quirks up. Eskel is a slugabed when he has the option. He routinely throws Geralt out of bed on lazy winter mornings because “you didn’t shake the headboard this much last night!” Geralt will never understand how he can drowse away while the sun is up. Evenings are best for loafing—a little wine, a glowing hearth, and a lap to rest your head in. Oh, _yes._ Poor, deluded Eskel.

Geralt catches sight of his saddlebags and the softness of the morning evaporates. The last few hours of Roach’s short life kick him right between the eyes, burying him in a disjointed, bloody avalanche. The hut (a dead man’s home. A man he’d failed to save) falling down around them is too small. He takes a deep breath to steady himself against the relentless press of memory, but that proves to be a mistake.

Eskel is on his feet before Geralt finishes groaning.

“I’m alright,” he grunts, straightening up with a grimace. Eskel’s eyes sweep all over Geralt’s bandages, probably looking for blood. “I’m alright,” he insists.

Eskel hums suspiciously in response and says nothing.

Geralt gestures to the bags. “I just—you found her.”

“I did,” Eskel agrees quietly, coming over to wrap big, rough hands over Geralt’s fragile-looking hip bones. Geralt watches broad fingers slot into the lee of his bones and sunken stomach with a surge of revulsion.

He knows, of course, that Eskel isn’t disgusted by his body, even weak and useless as it is now. But Geralt wouldn’t blame him if he was. Hell, Geralt’s disgusted with himself for letting his only real virtue fall into such a state. Eskel, unbothered, steps in and presses his chest all along Geralt’s bandaged back, resting his chin in the divot of his shoulder.

Geralt drags his eyes away, tries to focus on safer things, but safer things aren’t meant for witchers. The saddlebags capture his attention like a magnet. 

Eskel is a skilled tracker in his own right. If he found her body, then he read the scene. He knows what happened to Roach. Disconnected scenes flash across Geralt’s mind, again. Eskel probably knows what happened better than Geralt. He doesn’t need Geralt to spell it out for him, but—

“I did that to her.” He can’t keep the bitterness and loathing out of his voice. _He_ had killed Roach. He had _eaten her alive_. Roach, who trusted Geralt with her life. Roach, who died terrified and betrayed. His lips curl into a sneer.

Eskel sweeps his thumbs in soft circles over Geralt’s iliac crests. “I know” is all he says. Simple acceptance. It knocks the wind out of Geralt’s building head of self-disgust.

They stand in silence for several heartbeats before Eskel noses the hair at Geralt’s temple and presses a kiss to his scruffy cheek. “Come on,” he grunts, tugging Geralt away. “I found a razor yesterday. Go clean yourself up. I got contracts to collect on, and I can’t have you terrorizing the locals while I conduct business.”

It’s not long until they’re traveling away from Downwarren, much to Geralt’s relief. Eskel has pointed out that 'moping' is unattractive, but it’s hard to avoid while standing in a ghost town populated by Geralt’s own failures.

But the day is warm and clear, and Eskel is good company for a journey. Usually. When he isn’t being overbearing and insisting on taking breaks Geralt didn’t ask for, as if he can’t trust Geralt to know his own damn limits. Which is just insulting. There’s nothing a witcher is more familiar with than the limit of his own body. Case in point: he’s already made uncomfortable concessions because of that very familiarity.

Geralt hates the fact of it, but he can’t pull his own weight, and he _recognizes that,_ thank you, Eskel. Scorpion has no trouble bearing the weight of Geralt’s packs and armor, alongside Eskel’s own traveling kit. Strapping eight pounds of steel and silver to his back and wearing forty pounds of brigandine while hauling another thirty pounds of his salvaged gear won’t speed his healing or this journey, and he’s only prepared to put up with Eskel’s fussing for so long.

He does, however, keep a seax in his belt and several small daggers tucked in easy reach because there’s ‘taking it easy’ and then there’s being an idiot. Lambert can make all the jokes about Geralt’s intelligence he wants. Fools don’t live for a century.

So, uncomfortable in his blouse and breeches, Geralt walks shoulder to shoulder with an armed and armored Eskel while Scorpion walks sedately behind.

Exposed and lightweight as Geralt is, it’s a long and taxing walk to Benek. His legs are trembling already, and he knows if he looks down, he’ll see his sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his chest. He contemplates asking for another break and hates it, even while he braces himself to do it.

Eskel keeps glancing over to check on him, as if he can’t hear Geralt’s heartbeat and breathing across the scarce three feet between them. Geralt bites his tongue and forces his eyes forward. Geralt’s foul mood is none of Eskel’s fault, and he doesn’t deserve to have a temper born of muscle weakness and frustration vented on him. Eskel had a few unpleasant weeks of his own, Geralt reminds himself, even if he is fretting worse than Dandelion—

“We could stop for a bit.” Eskel's always been a little too good at anticipating Geralt.

“Do you need to stop?” Geralt snaps, turning a furious glare on Eskel. Lesser men have wet themselves after being pinned by a pair of angry viper eyes.

Eskel cocks an eyebrow, expression mild with that wry twist he gets when he realizes he’s pushed too hard. “Not particularly,” he allows, which isn’t provoking at all. It _isn’t_ , but Geralt is heart sore and exhausted and he just plain _hurts_ —his lips peel back to reveal oversized canines. Eskel holds his hands up in surrender. “Alright, Wolf. You win. I won’t ask again.”

It would be a lot more satisfying if Eskel didn’t sound like he was indulging one of Ciri’s tantrums. Geralt takes a few more steps for sheer spite, but...he had already decided to stop before snapping at Eskel. Gods dammit _._ “We should stop for a bit,” he groans.

Eskel doesn’t laugh or even smile where Geralt can see, and Geralt loves him for it.

They settle on a nearby rock, and Geralt tries not to sigh in relief. They drink water in silence and wait for Geralt’s tremors to stop. The warmth of the sunshine and Eskel’s solid presence combine with the soft rustle of wind in the leaves around them for an almost meditative effect. It’s nice. Probably the nicest ten consecutive minutes he’s ever spent in Velen.

“I hate this place,” he tells Eskel, dragging himself to his feet. His legs immediately start screaming at him, but they don’t shake.

“Me, too,” Eskel agrees, stretching his neck with a pop. “Let’s collect my money and get the hell out.”

They set out again, Geralt leaning on Scorpion more heavily than he’d like, but Eskel, bless him, says nothing about it. “Was thinking of going to Novigrad,” he says, thinking about the mattress waiting for him in the Chameleon with a longing that almost brings tears to his eyes.

Eskel looks over Scorpion’s back, trying not to frown. “Yeah,” he sighs, not succeeding. “I s’pose, after I get paid, I ought to get back—”

“Or stay here a while,” Geralt interrupts. “No sense in moving on when there’s work. I can’t take anything more than stripling witcher’s work. And even if I weren’t…” Geralt gestures at himself with the hand not hanging on to poor Scorpion, which nicely emphasizes his point, “I’ll be negotiating a loan with Vimme Vivaldi. And then finding a new Roach. And getting an earful from Yoanna about the state of my kit and commissioning a new set. Even I can tell that gambeson is a lost cause.”

Eskel looks like he wants to be convinced, and Geralt thinks about the joy in Eskel’s voice as he teased Geralt about their wedding night. He takes a shot in the dark. “Besides, I should introduce you to Dandelion. He runs an inn now; he’ll put us up. He’s been nagging me to let him meet my brothers for years. Could do him one better—” Geralt smiles over his shoulder, letting his lips quirk the way he knows makes Eskel half-crazy. “Could let him meet my husband.”

Eskel’s pupils blow so wide, they’re almost round even in the bright afternoon light, and his mouth drops open. _Bullseye._ Geralt’s body might be wrecked, but he’s still got a witcher’s instinct for weakness. He keeps smiling, but turns his face back to what Velen generously calls a road. “I even saved the veil. Owe you a proper wedding night, anyway. ”

Eskel’s footsteps stop, but Geralt and Scorpion keep their steady pace northward. Eventually, Eskel starts moving again. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely, trailing after Geralt like a puppy on a string. “I guess you do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! Thank you all for sticking this out! 
> 
> If anyone is interested, [Jarilo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarilo%22) is the name of a Slavic nature deity, associated with spring and horses, who was murdered by his wife. She then descended into madness. None of which I knew until I had most of the concept already hashed out and was researching details. Not get woo-woo on you but...synchronicities are real and terrifying.


End file.
